Hot on the heels of Apple’s Manhunt, which retold the story of Lincoln’s assassination, Netflix turns its attention to a president with a far lower profile: James Garfield, the 20th President of the United States. It’s a bold move – Garfield served only from March to September 1881 – yet Death By Lightning makes a compelling case for why his story deserves the spotlight. Despite his fleeting time in office, Garfield showed immense promise as a progressive, principled, and quietly charismatic leader whose potential was violently cut short.
The series, mercifully concise and sharply told, charts Garfield’s remarkable rise from party outsider to the reluctant but widely respected Republican nominee. As portrayed here, Garfield (Michael Shannon) is gentle yet stern, and righteous without self-righteousness. Colleagues and voters alike are drawn to his steadiness and moral clarity. He speaks decisively, carries himself with humility, and stands for ideas that feel startlingly resonant today, so much so that factions within his own party treat his virtues as liabilities. The first half of the series focuses on the political drama of Garfield’s ascent to the Oval Office, capturing the Republican Party’s messy, shifting alliances with clarity and pace. This might not suit crime drama fans, admittedly.
Running parallel to Garfield’s ascent is the far darker, far stranger descent of Charles J. Guiteau, the man who would ultimately assassinate him. Played with extraordinary, manic intensity by Matthew Macfadyen, Guiteau is a delusional drifter: a failed lawyer, a failed philanderer… a failed everything, whose boundless need for validation drives him from New York to Washington in pursuit of a role in Garfield’s orbit. His efforts to attach himself to the campaign range from pitiful to disturbing: he talks his way onto the fringes of the operation, is repeatedly thrown out, and yet continues to insist he is a friend and essential ally of the great and the good. Every rejection hardens his resolve, and when one final dismissal from one of Garfield’s secretaries, it give his fantasy a new and different focus. He purchases a gun. Macfadyen’s performance is riveting, portraying Guiteau not merely as an unhinged, tragi-comic figure but as a man consumed by the belief that the world owes him attention.
The final two episodes shift firmly into crime-drama territory, offering a chilling character study that will appeal to fans of true-crime psychopathy tales. The series also lands some eerily timely beats: today’s political landscape, fractured by mistruths, grievance, and a hunger for recognition, echoes uncomfortably through Guiteau’s delusions. Garfield represents integrity; Guiteau the triumph of self-mythology. Even after shooting the president, Guiteau imagines stardom, touting fan mail and a self-published book, convinced he has created something people can believe in.
Death By Lightning is handsomely staged, superbly acted, and, in places, surprisingly relevant.
Paul Hirons
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Death By Lightning is broadcast in the UK on Netflix