- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 28, 2024
Critic Reviews
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Making it to the end episode is something that you sort of do out of obligation here, and while that finale does throw up some great moments, you can't help but feel that The Madness would've been the perfect thriller had it been condensed to five or six episodes.
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It’s easy to imagine the limited series working quite well as a feature film. At nearly eight hours, though, it’s another maddeningly bloated modern streaming venture.
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The ultimate unraveling of conspiratorial revelations is a big fizzle. What keeps The Madness from ever becoming something wholly disposable is, as you may have guessed, Colman Domingo.
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He [Colman Domingo] and The Americans alum Alison “Poor Martha” Wright, playing a fixer for the bad guys, keep things fun for a while. But ultimately, there’s not quite enough madness to go around.
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The show was written and filmed before the 2024 election, but the cultural fractures examined here were no less present a few months ago (or years, or even decades). But it never really commits to unpacking these power structures outside of the show’s universe, where things spiral and stray too far from the pilot’s inciting incidents.
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Much like the protagonist in a psychological thriller, though, The Madness slowly loses its own sense of reality as it gets deeper into the mystery. Things become notably more far-fetched in the second half of the show’s eight episodes.