Death By Lightning<\/p>\n
![\"Death](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/lightning_102_unit_01178rc.jpg\")
\n Photo:\u00a0Larry Horricks\/Netflix<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve never heard of Charles J. Guiteau \u2014 or if the extent of your knowledge is limited to Stephen Sondheim\u2019s musical, Assassins<\/a> \u2014 load up Death By Lightning. The procedural-by-spry miniseries chronicles the surprise presidential ascendency of James A. Garfield and the slow-motion car crash that was Guiteau, his eventual assassin. These were real people who did real things! It can\u2019t be said enough.<\/p>\n Created by Mike Makowsky, whose blistering 2020 film Bad Education<\/a> would have been a much bigger deal for star Hugh Jackman if it hadn\u2019t been dropped mid-pandemic, adapts Candice Millard’s book Destiny of the Republic with a commitment to history but an ear for real talk. Like the often crude tone of Deadwood, Makowsky\u2019s incision into America\u2019s past unearths hot-headed politicians, wacky hucksters, and folks who cuss. As Garfield, Michael Shannon gets his most down-to-earth role, who is still a titan in congressional halls. Meanwhile, Matthew Macfadyen, fresh off crafting one of the saddest losers ever in Succession, finds similar frailty in Guiteau, who embodied the failure of the American Dream. With sepia tones and light-footedness, Makowsky also recalls Steven Spielberg\u2019s Lincoln \u2014 maybe because Shea Whigham as Roscoe Conkling and Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur are both terrific as they cut deals to push agendas forward. <\/p>\n After plowing through the series, I gotta say: Death By Lightning stands tall as a rare achievement for Netflix. It\u2019s hearty adult-targeting entertainment in just four episodes, no cheap cliffhangers required.<\/p>\n Splinter Cell: Deathwatch<\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re a longtime Splinter Cell fan or a newb who lives for fictional spycraft, Deathwatch is worth your time. Created by John Wick mastermind Derek Kolstad and animated in the now-traditional Castlevania and Tomb Raider anime-ish style, the Netflix series brings Sam Fisher (voiced by Liev Schreiber) out of retirement for a grim, globe-spanning mission that fuses stealth action with timely themes like climate disinformation and the possibly degrading loyalty of our servicemen to the U.S. government. We dug it. Here\u2019s our a bit of our original review<\/a>:<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time Fisher has questioned his role or work in the franchise \u2014 he\u2019s disobeyed direct orders before in the video games, and, spoiler alert, he does again in this series. But seeing that rebellion mirrored through McKenna, a much younger agent who still shares Fisher\u2019s anger and disenchantment about the relationships and people they\u2019ve lost throughout their years, is particularly poignant in conveying how their roles in the Fourth Echeleon don\u2019t feel like heroic spy power fantasies. There are no heroes here, just broken people.<\/p>\n This lack of heroes ultimately seems to be what Kolstad and his team want audiences to take away from Deathwatch. While the finale is dynamic, with some truly fantastic animation, the ending is so bleak that I waited through the end credits to see if there was more.<\/p>\n The Haunting of Hill House<\/p>\n Halloween is behind us but spooky season is forever<\/a>. And if you never saw Mike Flanagan\u2019s The Haunting of Hill House<\/a> miniseries, it\u2019s finally time to correct that.<\/p>\n Haunting of Hill House is more than just a series of well-timed jump scares \u2014 it\u2019s a masterclass in turning supernatural terror into a devastating family drama. Flanagan, who may be best known now for Midnight Mass, breathes new life into Shirley Jackson\u2019s classic novel by focusing on the Crain siblings, whose childhood in the titular haunted house left deep psychic wounds. As adults, they\u2019re broken in different ways, each trying to suppress their trauma, until eerie visitations \u2014 and memories they can no longer outrun \u2014 pull them back to Hill House. What unfolds is a chilling, gorgeously shot series that finds just as much fear in grief and addiction as it does in ghosts.<\/p>\n Flanagan doesn\u2019t leave his characters in despair. Beneath the show\u2019s oppressive atmosphere and hidden phantoms \u2014 some tucked slyly into the background of nearly every scene! \u2014 is a carefully built story about acceptance and healing. So we suggest: turn down those lights and sit with Haunting of Hill House\u2019s brand of darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All of a sudden it\u2019s cold. And if it\u2019s not cold where you live, sorry, but it\u2019s gonna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-141557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Key](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/splinter_cell__deathwatch_u_s1_00_17_09_06.png\")
\n Image: Netflix<\/p>\n![\"haunting-hill-house-nell.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/haunting-hill-house-nell.jpg\")
\n Nell’s ghost in The Haunting of Hill HouseImage: Netflix<\/p>\n