The 1881 assassination of James Garfield by a deranged office seeker is the topic of the new Netflix series Death By Lightning. It was released today and is only available on Netflix. So far it has gotten only good reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes the critics’ score is 100%. According to TV Guide, the series uses Garfield’s life “as a fascinating window into his era’s confusion, madness, and missed opportunities, sometimes finding relevant echoes of our own time…”
The Daily Beast says the series is a “sneakily timely tale.” The LA Times judges the series to be “unusually persuasive.” Variety gave it a mixed review saying that “for those who enjoy history, the series is beautifully acted and detailed. Yet, four episodes feel excessive…”
USA Today says that in spite of the terror of the assassination, the series is FUN:
The most fun you’ll have on TV this fall is with the likes of James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Seriously.
Are those old-timey names ringing a little bit of a bell? Maybe a sense memory from seventh-grade U.S. history class, where you learned about the 19th-century president who was assassinated who wasn’t Abraham Lincoln? Maybe you remember black-and-white photos of men with big beards and bigger sideburns, and some annoying guy pulling out the bit of trivia at a party that Garfield wasn’t killed by the bullet but by the infection that followed?
This isn’t a test, so if you can’t remember your presidential lore fear not, you’ll still deeply enjoy Netflix’s new historical romp “Death by Lightning” (streaming now, ★★★½ out of four). The four-episode limited series is a surprisingly fun look at the unlikely ascension of Garfield (a straight-talking Michael Shannon) to the presidency and his assassination three months later by delusional political-wannabe Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession”).
Richard Roeper at the Roger Ebert Report is similarly enthusiastic:
This is part of what makes this tightly spun yet thoroughly informative four-chapter series from creator Mike Makowsky (“Bad Education”) and executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (“Game of Thrones”) so enthralling. I daresay most of us aren’t scholars about the circumstances that led to Guiteau taking aim with a .44-caliber British Bulldog revolver and shooting Garfield from behind in that Washington train station—and “Death by Lightning” is filled with “I was today years old when I learned…” moments. 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…
As more reviews come out I will post them on The Reconstruction Era Blog.
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