Review by C.J. Bunce
Not since Henry Fonda played a young Honest Abe in Young Mr. Lincoln and Raymond Massey played him in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, not since Cliff Robertson played a young JFK in PT 109, and not since Frank Langella played Nixon in Frost/Nixon* has an actor inhabited the role of a U.S. President as TV audiences will find in Michael Shannon’s stoic and admirable President James “Jim” Garfield and Nick Offerman as his colossally unqualified successor Chester Arthur. Not since Frank Sinatra starred in Suddenly! has there been such a surprising look at an assassin as Matthew Macfadyen’s detached from reality Charles Guiteau. It’s all crammed into four episodes of the limited series Death by Lightning, creator Mike Makowsky and director Matt Ross’s comical, attractive, and over-dramatic adaptation of an Edgar Award-winning book by Candice Mallard.
The casting of this series will have viewers wishing that the story started years earlier and focused more on Shannon (Midnight Special, The Shape of Water, Man of Steel) as a politician making his way up the political ladder. It’s a shame we couldn’t see more of the five leads better developing these characters over time. The script, divided over four short TV hours, wastes a lot of time with modern dialogue and profanity for shock value, over-dramaticizing its historical figures as often as it over-simplifies historical events and concocts fictional sequences for storytelling purposes.
At first it seems like the lead character of the series is the assassin Guiteau, but the drama ultimately is nicely shared among an impressive slate of actors. Macfadyen, known for roles in historical movies like Operation Mincemeat, The Current War, and Frost/Nixon, is frequently painful to watch. But it’s all in the actor’s immense talent that he creates this immature minded, tragic, mentally unstable opportunist who fails at literally everything, well, except one thing.
Shannon owns the room in every scene, propelled to the presidency because of a powerful speech (not unlike a stump speech once given by Barack Obama) that triggers the Republican party to abandon its current leadership. That includes The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford as the more enlightened politician James Blaine and Shea Whigham as the always ranting, corrupt Roscoe Conkling. Homicide: Life on the Street alumnus Željko Ivanek plays the doctor who botches Garfield’s recovery. Andor’s Kyle Soller played Robert Todd Lincoln, but if his scenes didn’t get cut I missed them completely. Blink and you’ll also miss an appearance by Alexander Graham Bell at Garfield’s death that is another item that could have been better explained and delivered.
Women actors don’t fare as well. Mrs. Davis star Betty Gilpin is relegated to the wife role, a cookie cutter First Lady who makes the best of the script’s stilted dialogue when she’s not there to serve as an ahistorical story device (like discussing the toilet with Guiteau or brandishing history’s future forgetfulness on Guiteau before his hanging). I don’t think the story writer understood how to use and not use foreshadowing, but repeatedly stating the end is coming in so many ways lands flat quickly. The usually delightful Tuppence Middleton is wasted as the mistress of Conkling who somehow (that is unexplained) steers a group of women suffragists to turn on him and cause him to lose out as the party pick.
The quirkiness of the show’s tone is discomfitting. The humor is too much here, the drama appropriately serious there. The imbalance may leave you wondering what the creators want you to take away from their interpretation. Is this a Tom Jones-esque parody, or intended as historically accurate, bent for the entertainment needs of a 21st century audience? Something else? I’m still not sure what the title means.
But the standout of the show is Nick Offerman, who audiences know from his run as an anti-establishment local government worker on Parks and Recreation and his notable performances in The Last of Us, The Founder, The Resort, Bad Times at the El Royale, and 21 Jump Street. It will be impossible not to compare Offerman’s take on Chester Arthur as a crybaby, drunk, screaming, incompetent, loud-mouthed politician (who proclaims he is unqualified to be Vice President or President) to a certain current U.S. President. It’s a memorable performance–I just didn’t buy the immediate turnaround of Arthur to angel after Garfield’s death. If there’s one lesson of history carried forward in this series, it’s that incompetent men have made their way to the White House throughout the nation’s history by hook or by crook.
The Gentlemen production designer Gemma Jackson provides TV’s best yet look at historical Washington, D.C. and 19th century Ohio, and The Gentlemen’s Michael Wilkinson re-created some impressive costumes for the show.
If you’re not too disgusted with politics in the 21st century and can put aside reality, you may enjoy the entertainment value carried by the actors of Death by Lightning and the hope delivered by the infectious authenticity of Michael Shannon as a thoughtful politician trying to take down industry and graft in his mere six months in office. The drama following the shooting and the documented primitive medical methods that precipitated his death are especially well-handled and the best part of the series from a historical perspective.
All four episodes of the limited series Death by Lightning are streaming now on Netflix.
* In addition to the U.S. President appearances on film mentioned above, for more good performances don’t miss Christopher McDonald’s turn as a lookalike son of JFK in the Law & Order episode “Illegitimate,” and FDR ringer Edward Herrmann’s multiple roles as the President in series and movies during various stages of his life.
