Congress’s January hearings aim to be TV spectacular that ‘blows the roof off’

House select committee members have drafted in a former top TV executive to choreograph the six public hearings

The directors are hoping that the storyline will have all the elements of a TV smash hit: a King Lear figure ranting and raving as his power slips away from him, a glamorous couple struggling to rise above the fray, shady characters scheming sedition in hotel bedrooms, hordes of thugs in paramilitary gear chanting hang him" as they march on the nation's capitol.

When the US House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection opens its hearings on Thursday evening, it will do so in prime time and with primetime production values. The seven Democrats and two Republicans - shunned by their own party - who sit on the panel are pulling out all the stops in an attempt to seize the public's attention.