Death by Lightning review – Nobody ever plays losers like Matthew Macfadyen | TV and radio

‘M“Your name,” says Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), the hero of the powerful four-part historical series “Death by Lightning,” “will one day be known throughout this country!” Guiteau has, so far, been wrong. He tried to insert himself into history by assassinating the US president, James Garfield, in 1881 – but Garfield was only four months into his term, so all Guiteau did by shooting him was turn them into difficult answers in a public quiz.

Death by Lightning carefully pays tribute to Garfield, a quietly extraordinary statesman, but its focus is on Guiteau, and if this show is a hit, he may finally get his wish. If so, it’s because Charles Guiteau has become synonymous with the kind of pathetic geek that Matthew Macfadyen plays better than anyone else on television.

Wild-eyed, sporting a pointy and somewhat clumsy beard, and forever modifying his old clothes, Guiteau is a fantasist, a serial liar who doesn’t pay the bills and has no skills or vocation beyond relentless self-promotion. You can almost smell his desperation as he moves from one humiliation to the next: the bank manager immediately denies him the loan he needs for his ill-considered plan to start a newspaper; Guiteau’s arrogant brother-in-law (Ben Miles) correctly tells his good-natured wife Frannie (Paula Malcomson) that her brother is a parasite and will never repay her faith. Female company eludes him even when he spends five years in the free-love society, because he was too annoying for any of the women to have sex with him.

He ran out of bizarre scams when he came across a crowd gathered outside the 1880 Republican Party convention in Chicago. As Garfield becomes the Republican nominee and then the twentieth president, Guiteau’s greatest and ultimate obsession will be his quest to become Garfield’s trusted assistant, and perhaps friend.

Macfadyen has clearly been caught out over his portrayal of greasy climber Tom Wambsgans in Succession, but here he takes his mastery of absorbing losers to another level. Wambsgans accepted every Faustian bargain to achieve wealth and status. Guiteau didn’t even receive the offer. Macfadyen nails it all, from his maniacal joy when he briefly believes he’s winning, to his stifled guffaw of disbelief when he’s rebuffed. It’s mostly comedic but his one substantive encounter with Garfield, whom he spends weeks searching for, is painfully tragic, as Guiteau opens his soul to reveal whatever is inside. Macfadyen is wonderful in every terrible moment.

The smaller of the series’ parallel novels stars Michael Shannon as Garfield, who gives an endorsement speech for the candidate at the 1880 convention that is so dramatic, he wins the Republican nomination despite not being on the ballot. By sticking to his principles and meeting directly with voters — his campaign shows him inviting citizens onto his front porch to chat — Garfield becomes president. His program of progressive reforms terrifies the corrupt Republican elite, who move to protect their financial interests and are willing to burn the party to the ground if it means they can rule in ash.

This is where Death by Lightning has the most fun, with Shea Whigham as the arrogant, bully Roscoe Conkling, and Nick Offerman playing perfectly as Chester Arthur, a violent man who vomits on a man being sworn in as Garfield’s vice president out of political necessity to get New York’s fat cat faction on his side. Offerman is most funny when Arthur is a gruff growler (his drunken catchphrase: “Music! Fighting! Hot dogs!”), and then suddenly poignantly vulnerable when we glimpse the man inside the monster. Arthur is the product of a system that preys on people who are tired of being beaten, offering them rewards if they sell their principles and take the beating instead. Arthur can’t drink enough to erase this shame.

The show struggles to find a similar story for Garfield, who considers himself self-aware of the wrongdoing, which doesn’t give Shannon much to chew on. In its desire to wrap up the story in under four hours, Death by Lightning also resorts to some hasty character transitions and a fair amount of heavily expository dialogue, while its female characters are rarely heard above the din of flawed men. Everyone is in Guiteau’s shadow: when he’s not on screen, we wait for his return to see what terrible defeat he will inflict on himself next.

The last one is at the gallows, which he sees as an opportunity to surprise the gathered audience with his speech for the last time. He dies on his ass and then dies. We know the name now, but it’s Macfadyen’s performance that we’ll really remember.

Death by Lightning is on Netflix