Harry Shearer and Henry Goodman star in a comedy drama revealing the extraordinary conversations that took place behind the closed doors of the Oval Office during President "I am not a crook" Nixon's time in office.

Written by Shearer in collaboration with Dr Stanley Kutler, the historian whose lawsuit ensured the release of the long-suppressed Nixon tapes in 1997, the deadpan series draws on more than 2,000 hours of meetings and telephone conversations recorded by Nixon via a secret system he had installed in the White House.

The result is an eye-opening and amusing insight into the paranoia, ego and secretive dealings of 'Tricky Dicky'. Rambling conversations, clumsy comments and awkward meetings expose Nixon's intimate, sly and fraught relationship with his close advisor Henry Kissinger (Goodman), his obsession with wire-tapping, his difficult relationship with the media and his anxiety over the East Coast intellectual establishment.

The late Sir David Frost, who conducted a series of seminal interviews with the flawed US president in the 1970s, introduces each episode of unbelievable, yet completely true, White House conversations, while comedian and satirist Shearer (The Simpsons) brilliantly portrays the eccentricities of the tragi-comic American leader.

Directed by Sasha Ransome and filmed in the style of a fly-on-the wall documentary, the series forms part of Sky Arts' acclaimed Playhouse Presents... strand and provides a funny and eyebrow-raising look at the wild musings of the 37th US President: a man whose thoughts, words and actions led to decisions that reverberated all over the world.