- Network: Apple TV+
- Series Premiere Date: Mar 15, 2024
Critic Reviews
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The series illuminates details left out of other standard Civil War stories, and it will have you looking up the real history on Wikipedia. A special emphasis on the Wall Street tycoons who supported the Confederacy (and became rich from the slave trade) illustrates parallels with modern-day politics. Good art tells a story you can't stop thinking about, but great art tells a story that makes you think about real life.
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Cerebral, engrossing.
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Even though it has some issues, I quickly became obsessed with this limited series’ compelling story. Historical nuggets, powerful performances, and an engrossing investigation that had a lasting impact on American history lead to Manhunt being an addictive true crime thriller.
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All of this might sound like a dry history lesson, but the show becomes fully three-dimensional in its performances, particularly a stunning one from Menzie.
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Well-played and strikingly made, Manhunt is part crime potboiler, part political thriller, part historical overview — and each strand works a treat.
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Long after Stanton’s cat-and-mouse pursuit of John Wilkes Booth (Masters of the Air‘s Anthony Boyle) has concluded, what lingers is the series’ portrait of a nation at a crossroads, and its reflection on the bitter compromises and hard-won triumphs of the era that resonate to this day. To get there, though, Manhunt begins by delivering on the breathless conspiracy thriller it’s packaged as.
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Manhunt is compelling television by virtue of being both a riveting political thriller and an intimate human drama. Whatever you think you know about the Lincoln assassination already, be prepared to walk away with a reshaped understanding of events — or, at the very least, an appreciation for this new examination of one of the most infamous crimes in history.
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It's in many ways a subtle drama, but is also highly emotionally charged. What it lacks in pace, and there are times at which this drags the show down, it does thankfully make up for in powerful character drama.
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It's the rare miniseries that feels one episode too short, rather than two episodes too long. Filled with fascinating details that go well beyond high school history books and strong performances from its leads to its bit players, Manhunt is never less than compelling, however.
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Menzies' energy elevates the material. Stanton, as written, is a typical hero, down to the wife who begs him to abandon this dangerous and all-consuming mission, think of his health and so on. With all that, he still sculpts a performance that is solid granite supporting a crackled shale of a script.
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Ultimately, you can’t help feel that a better drama would have invisibly stitched in all of Manhunt’s pedestrian historical stodge.
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It is all quality stuff. But it takes itself very seriously and the insistent detailing makes you yearn for the leaner, keener beast buried within this lumbering one to break free.
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The series is well furnished and costumed and moves with pep through its alternating scenes of action and reflection; it is various enough not to get dull. But it’s very much a TV show, with TV beats, made to entertain before it’s made to inform. The problem with any docudrama is that once you know a few things are wrong or fabricated, you begin to question the rest of it.
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With the exception of Mr. Menzies and Lili Taylor as Mary Todd Lincoln—their acting being the best arguments for sticking with the show—the actors give broad performances; the racists are vicious cartoons and the ex-slaves are all cherubic. .... And yet, the story—and the bits of factual detail with which is adorned—will likely keep one watching.
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Manhunt winds up being a mixed bag of thrilling revelation and tortuous tedium. The Apple TV+ show often loses its all its juice by trying to squeeze in as much historical embellishment as possible.
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This show manages to invoke this feeling of perilousness and adrenaline when it can get past its two worst compulsions: to invoke contemporary resonances whenever it gets a chance, and to pack in detail through copious and confusing flashbacks.
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Though the setting and costumes are beautifully showcased, misfiring guns, horseback chases and added dream sequences make the action and adventure a bit slow and stale for a 21st-century audience.
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Using flashbacks to flesh out the seven episodes, the show lacks the narrative momentum the title would suggest, feeling a little too much like homework by landing in a no-man’s land that doesn’t find the sweet spot between politics and true crime.
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With seven episodes and too little narrative, it feels as if the writers are dragging a shorter project out, and a languid pace just doesn't work for a story that only took place over the course of twelve days.
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This is historical fiction at its most facile, too self-righteous to be persuasive about the historical parallels it’s trying to illustrate and too listless to make watching it feel like little more than required AP History homework.
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It’s just unfortunate that the whole series isn’t as lively and provocative as its most memorable moments.
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It’s a skilfully put together drama yet its po-facedness and glum pacing makes for lacklustre viewing. Given the raw materials – political skulduggery, weird hats, magnificent mutton chops – Manhunt should be engrossing. Alas, I was bored.
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Booth and Menzies are solid performers (Hamish Linklater is a slighter presence as Lincoln) but the series plods through seven hour-long episodes when it could have done something thrilling with three or four.