The drama centers on a rogue Texas congressman (Hanks) whose penchant for booze and women earned him the nickname Good Time Charlie. He watched his political career almost go down the drain in the early 1980s when he was caught in a hot tub tryst with two cocaine-sniffing showgirls in Las Vegas.

He survived the scandal and ended up overseeing the largest and most successful covert CIA operation in history; his efforts to fund resistance fighters in Afghanistan hastened the fall of the Iron Curtain.