'Death by Lightning' Is Surprisingly Funny for a Historical Drama About Assassination
The forgotten story of President James Garfield gets turned into a dark Netflix dramedy
Death by Lightning, Netflix’s new historical drama limited series, opens with an on-screen title that very simply lays out what it’s all about: “This is a true story about two men the world forgot. One was the 20th President of the United States. The other shot him.” The president is James Garfield, played by Michael Shannon, and the assassin is Charles Guiteau, played by Matthew Macfadyen, aka Tom from Succession. This is a genuinely obscure chapter of American history, which allows the show’s makers to angle their retelling the way they want. They lean into the theme of historical memory, and also find some contemporary parallels. The result is a good show that feels a little bit rushed and unpolished but has some fun performances and a surprisingly, enjoyably comedic tone.
The comedy is often of the tragicomic variety, because the facts of Garfield’s story are so ironic and strange that you have to laugh. He was selected as the Republican nominee during the bitterly contested convention of 1880 without seeking the nomination, and then he was shot four months into his term. He wasn’t supposed to be President, so it was taken away from him. And Charles Guiteau, a psychopathic office seeker frustrated by his inability to secure a position in the administration, is a pathetic figure that the show alternately feels contempt and compassion for. Before he shot the President, he spent some time at the free love-practicing Oneida community, but nobody would fuck him. Macfadyen plays him with a suitably Wambsgansian combination of arrogance and pathos.
The cast is stacked with actors who are equally adept at comedy and drama. In a bit of self-referential casting, two actors who are best known for other shows about government — The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford and Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman — have big roles, Whitford as Garfield’s Secretary of State James Blaine and Offerman as his Vice President and successor Chester A. Arthur. Offerman’s Arthur has the show’s best arc, starting out as an alcoholic, sausage-loving machine politics enforcer who is eventually won over by Garfield’s anti-corruption and pro-Black (for the time) politics and steps up when called to take the highest office. He’s often partnered with his patron, Shea Whigham’s Roscoe Conkling, a powerful Senator from New York who wields power like a mob boss (he even has a scene where he interrogates a disloyal flunky in an empty warehouse). One of the clearest ways I can communicate the show’s sense of humor is by showing you a picture of Whigham’s Willy Wonka-ass look as Conkling.
The scripts from Bad Education screenwriter Mike Makowsky embrace anachronism sometimes, but not quite enough to be a stylized revisionist take, which makes the show feel a bit unsure of itself. Contemporary-sounding phrases and constant F-words sit uncomfortably beside flowery 1880s language. The inconsistent dialogue actually makes sense with the tone, but it’s just not executed with enough finesse to totally work. And while the four-episode runtime keeps the pace moving quickly, it leaves some of the characters not as fleshed out as they could be. Shannon is dignified and magisterial as Garfield, but the show’s attempt to portray him as a Lincoln-esque progressive reformer who didn’t get the chance to show the world what he could do is not totally convincing. He’s the show’s most important character, but the least colorful one, which means he gets overshadowed by Macfadyen and Whigham and Offerman and Whitford.
The show is at its most effective when it allows viewers to make connections between the past and present. Mentally unstable, alienated men have always been a potent political force. One crazy guy has the power to alter the course of history, even if history subsequently forgets him (does the name “Thomas Matthew Crooks” mean anything to you?). And the spoils system looks quaint compared to the hyper-corruption we’re witnessing now. It was an era when personal scandal could still end a career. Imagine that.
Death by Lightning is directed by Matt Ross, known as a director for the movie Captain Fantastic and as an actor for playing Gavin Belson on Silicon Valley. He’s also my neighbor, and it’s a relief that I can sincerely tell him I like the show. He previously directed Gaslit, another distinctively funny historical drama limited series with a great Shea Whigham performance. It was a show about Watergate starring Sean Penn and Julia Roberts that went totally under the radar in 2022 because it was on Starz. If you like Death by Lightning, check Gaslit out next.
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I went to a screening and panel on Monday and Michael Shannon teased Shea about not wanting to wear a wig. So he was in hair/makeup for a long time every day to get those curls just right. (I love their friendship!)