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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
29
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The TelegraphNov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
[Matthew Macfadyen] delivers a peach of a performance here – not as Garfield, but as the man who assassinated him. .... Writer Mike Makowsky keeps things smart and succinct, and your attention will never wane. What could have been a fusty historical footnote is a pacy drama infused with humour.
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IndieWireNov 6, 2025
The Mercury NewsNov 7, 2025
RogerEbert.comNov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
Although the series regularly indulges in purely fictional dramatic flourishes (as does every project of this kind), this is a gripping and essentially truthful telling of the tale, with magnificent work by two fine actors who are clearly relishing the richness of the roles they’ve been given: Michael Shannon as Garfield, and Matthew Macfadyen as Guiteau.
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Nov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
The series' self-assuredness is helped by a cast that is a joy to look at in their 19th-century getups before they utter a single word. Once they do, the show is irresistible, especially when Whitford spits vintage insults at Whigham and Offerman totters about drunkenly in a top hat and tails.
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Nov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
“Death by Lightning” manages to make all of this both deadly serious and weirdly irreverent. And it does so in a mere four episodes, a minor miracle in these days of the bloated 10-hour “limited” series. Streamers and showrunners, take note. Less can be more. And strong storytelling can hit with the quickness of a lightning bolt.
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Nov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
By the last hour, the more serious tone takes over again, but it’s earned given what we’ve seen Garfield endure (though I could have done without Garfield’s widow visiting Guiteau in prison, which never happened in real life and seems designed to unnecessarily juice the drama quotient). Still, for fans of historical fiction, “Death by Lightning” remains worthwhile.
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Nov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
It is, in other words, a show that tells its story in a swift, condensed form, but doesn’t exactly demand more for not having that much more story to tell. Instead, what we’re here for mostly is to watch just about every one of your favorite character actors play Reconstruction-era “House of Cards” for a couple hours, an exercise the cast makes pleasurable enough to justify the enterprise.
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The IndependentNov 6, 2025
Season 1 Review:
While it’s garnished throughout with nice visual touches, Death by Lightning is not without longueurs: the first episode, in particular, feels a little like sitting through a fusty lecture on the politics of the Gilded Age. Not helping its cause is a script from Mike Makowsky that, on occasion, makes the whole thing feel like a belated PR exercise for America’s most unsung president.
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