Written by Harry 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, his obsession with wire-tapping, his difficult relationship with the media and his anxiety over the East Coast intellectual establishment.