Death by Lightning, a four-part Netflix miniseries, plays like politics in period costume: a 19th-century West Wing full of idealism, infighting and the theater of public life. The series centers on an elected representative bent on doing right amid a corrosive political atmosphere, and it balances sweeping public oratory with quiet domestic intimacy.
Michael Shannon brings a fierce clarity to James Garfield’s public persona—electrifying speeches and a commanding presence—while also showing Garfield at home as a gentle husband, father and farmer, unexpectedly unsuited for the capital’s cutthroat maneuvers. Matthew Macfadyen is richly unsettling as Charles Guiteau, a man of humble means and outsized self-regard who resorts to theft, forgery and deception to claw his way forward. Macfadyen finds a childlike ardor in Guiteau, making his bluster and desperation equally sympathetic and unnerving; his opening courtroom or jailhouse scenes in 1880 quickly establish the character’s emotional volatility.
The convention arc—Garfield asked to nominate a fellow Ohioan, delivering a speech so persuasive that his own name rises on the 36th ballot—captures how accidental power can feel inevitable. Bradley Whitford’s amused, calculating James Blaine provides a foil to Garfield’s earnestness. Among the supporting cast, Nick Offerman’s Chester Alan Arthur is at once boorish and unexpectedly tender, and Betty Gilpin’s Lucretia (Crete) Garfield gives the show its most intimate chemistry. Gilpin’s quiet scenes with Shannon are touching, and a later decisive moment from Crete explains why her role, though not expansive, is historically consequential.
Created by Mike Makowsky and adapted from Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, the series counts David Benioff and D.B. Weiss as executive producers. Their production exposes recurring forms of arrogance—political, social and medical—while threading strains of hope and despair throughout the narrative. The treatment of Guiteau also recalls Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, where the killer’s fervent, almost childlike energy gets a disturbing musical spotlight.
Ultimately Death by Lightning works both as a compact history lesson and as resonant drama: superbly acted, morally complex and intimate enough to make the politics feel immediate and human.