The story of an under-sung American hero and the damn fool who shot him, Netflix’s Death by Lightning is a bit like Hamilton without the rapping. But where Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical delivers its tale with full-throated enthusiasm and wide-eyed admiration for its subject, Mike Makowsky’s four-part miniseries can’t quite commit to the same level of earnestness, though at times it feels like it would like to.
Death by Lightning focuses on U.S. President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) and the man who adored, obsessed over, and eventually assassinated him, Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen). The pair are quickly established as polar opposites: Guiteau is an aspirational schemer who’s racked up quite a criminal record, while Garfield is a man so humble that he has to be dragged into the presidential race against his will.
Burying his more manic mannerisms under a bushy beard and stately demeanor, Shannon is highly convincing as one of history’s Great Men—the sort who radiate so much fortitude and decency that people can’t help but fall in line behind them. Conversely, Macfadyen excels as a particularly spineless sort of follower, and he plays Guiteau as an even more desperate, more submissive version of his Succession character, Tom. There’s a childlike naïvete to Guiteau, a cheerful conviction to the way he tells such obvious lies, that he becomes oddly endearing.
The show’s plot is kicked into motion when Garfield delivers a thunderous speech at the 1880 Republican National Convention, awing his listeners to such a degree that they abandon their established candidates in favor of “The Man from Ohio.” Guiteau gets wind of this exciting newcomer, is instantly smitten, and begins working tirelessly to ingratiate himself with Garfield. When that enthusiasm goes unreciprocated, things take a very dark turn.
The series outfits its characters in lavish period costumes and elaborate sideburns, but it seems less sure of how to style itself. At times, especially when we’re following Garfield, Death by Lightning is a classically styled period piece about a noble man on a quest to do good. At others, it’s a fast-cutting, fast-talking lark about amoral political operators in the mode of the glossier, more raucous historical shows that have found success in recent years.
Would that the schism between these two styles were more obviously intentional, demarcating a divide between the grand dream of America that Garfield embodies and the grubby, self-interested political reality that Guiteau represents. As it is, though, they spill over into each other in a way that simply makes things feel a bit messy. The dialogue splits the difference, switching freely between ornate, old-timey speech and modern vernacular, with Guiteau in particular using oddly anachronistic phrases like “meeting the moment” and referring to himself as a one of Garfield’s “boosters.”
Fortunately, the actors seem to know exactly what they’re doing. Shea Whigham has spent much of his career playing the straight man, so it’s nice to see him given the chance, as Senator Roscoe Conkling, to chew the scenery as a literal cane-twirling villain. Elsewhere, Nick Offerman’s gruff comedic charms are well deployed as the beer-swilling, brass knuckle-brandishing vice president, and while Betty Gilpin is largely relegated to the thankless role of “Great Man’s Wife,” she explodes into life for a couple of knockout scenes in the final episode.
While the bond between the Garfields feels natural and lived-in, though, Death by Lightning struggles to bring that kind of depth to its most important relationship: the one between Guiteau and the president. Guiteau spends most of the series stuck in a loop of repetitive scenes as he harries one Garfield ally after another in a bid to become one of them. He circles the edges of the main story without any sense that he’s winding up or tragically unraveling. Even in this fictionalized version of his life, Guiteau finds himself lost in the shadows of Garfield’s tale.
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Death by Lightning had potential to be a great series. It has a great cast, and of course, the subject matter is interesting. Unfortunately, after the first couple of episodes, I found the speech anachronisms too annoying to put up with and stopped watching. I wish writers and directors and producers would take some care in keeping a piece of work like this free of slang, mannerisms, tone that is not inherent to the time of the story.