Death by Lightning

You leave Death By Lightning admiring Garfield, but thinking up ways to write Guiteau—a quintessential toxic failure, the ultimate “historical guy we should thank our stars never got on the internet”—into a novel.

“Death by Lightning” delivers the historical goods by way of incredibly entertaining performances.

The four-episode limited series on Netflix is both a timely exploration of leadership and disillusionment in the post-Civil War era and a frequently amusing character drama featuring a host of beloved actors in bushy beards.

If you don’t know much about the assassination of James Garfield—or even if you do—this Netflix limited series is a delicious and refreshingly economical four-episode binge.

In just four episodes, Death By Lightning gives a forgotten historical footnote the prestigious retelling it deserves. A show worth remembering, even if it risks getting buried by Netflix’s unforgiving algorithm. 

“Death By Lightning” rousingly entertains and enlightens in equal measures while giving a talented cast some colorful real-life figures to portray while handing them extra-tart dialogue to chew on. It’s one of Netflix’s better series this year.

This astoundingly moving yet hilarious–at times in the same scene–series depicts the how and why of an American political tragedy.

A savvy and well-paced political thunderstorm, "Death by Lightning" uses its talented cast to build a thrilling story out of an oft-forgotten moment in history.

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.

“Death by Lightning” is a pleasantly weird show that cheerfully upends much that we’ve come to expect from presidential biopics.

“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.

Death By Lightning is a lively drama about a little-explored facet of American history, punctuated by spot-on performances by its excellent cast.

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.

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.

Death by Lightning is one of the best historical dramas released in recent memory, and certainly worthy of a watch for any fans of the cast or anyone with even a minor interest in history.

Death By Lightning makes a forceful argument that forgotten people and events can be just as entertainingly dramatized as famous ones.

A sneakily timely tale that boasts echoes of our present domestic madness.

It is the duo of Shannon and Macfadyen, portraying upright Americana and the American berserk, who are profound and unforgettable. And not to be missed.

Even delivering the story in truncated form in no way detracts from the strong and occasionally deliriously fun performances from Macfadyen, Shannon and the supporting likes of Nick Offerman, Betty Gilpin, Bradley Whitford and Shea Whigham.

The series largely belongs to them — both actors are terrific, Shannon imbuing Garfield with a gravity leavened with kindness and humor, Macfadyen’s Guiteau, optimistically dedicated to his delusions yet always about to pop. But it’s a loaded cast.

While “Death by Lightning” isn’t the most riveting political drama, it is refreshing to see a depiction of a forgotten man who could have put our country on an alternative course.

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.

[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.

Shannon is quietly magnetic, yet the series never allows him to be overshadowed by the more colorful characters surrounding him. And though Macfadyen has the showier role, he brings a remarkable amount of subtlety to it.

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.

We know the name now, but Macfadyen’s performance is what we’ll really remember.

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.

The four-hour limited series arranges its vivid political portraits into a rip-roaring yarn that’s scalding and endearing, riotous and mournful, a plea for America’s better angels to surface and a eulogy for a country that never lived up to its ideals.

There’s so much material that Death By Lightning can’t decide what to focus on, so it opts for packing as much as possible into its scant four episodes. The result is a meandering saga rife with tonal whiplash.