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Netflix's Death By Lightning is rife with tonal whiplash

Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen star in an overpacked show about James Garfield and his assassin.

By Jenna Scherer | November 6, 2025 | 3:01am

Photo: Larry Horricks/Netflix

TV Reviews Death By Lightning

Netflix's Death By Lightning is rife with tonal whiplash

Pop quiz: Can you name the six men who held the highest office in the land after Abraham Lincoln? Unless you’re an armchair historian, this is probably a stumper. There’s a reason why academics dubbed this dirty half dozen the “forgotten presidents.” Three were pretty ineffectual, one was mired in corruption, one never wanted to be president at all, and one died only six months into his term.

This last one, James Garfield, is at the center of Netflix’s Death By Lightning, sharing the spotlight with his unhinged assassin, Charles Guiteau. Mike Makowsky’s limited series, based on Candice Millard’s Destiny Of The Republic: A Tale Of Madness, Medicine And The Murder Of A President, chronicles two tumultuous years in U.S. politics. It’s a whopper of a tale that involves, among other things, political infighting, a radical free-love commune, quack doctors, a vengeful mistress, midnight kidnappings, and the invention of the metal detector.

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On paper, this all sounds like rich material for a small-screen drama. The thing is, there’s so much material that Death By Lightning can’t decide what to focus on, so it opts for packing as much as possible into its scant four episodes. The result is a meandering saga rife with tonal whiplash. Is it a psychological portrait of a madman? A Conclave-esque political thriller? A gentle family drama? A four-hour Drunk History segment? Yes to all. Thankfully, the series is salvaged by its talented cast, led by Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen.

Our story kicks off in 1880, when Garfield (Shannon), a mild-mannered family man and Civil War hero, heads to the Republican National Convention to decide who will be the GOP’s next presidential candidate. The vote is initially split between James Blaine (Bradley Whitford) and incumbent Ulysses S. Grant (Wayne Brett), but the contest takes a surprise turn after Garfield gives an impassioned speech about the future of the party. Before long, he finds himself at the top of the ticket. And though he easily earns the love of the American people, he stokes the ire of Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham), whose ice-cold devotion to the political machine is a stark contrast to Garfield’s essential goodness. While Conkling uses his influence to secure the vice presidency for his hard-drinking crony Chester Arthur (Nick Offerman), Garfield finds an ally in Blaine, whom he names secretary of state.

Garfield also earns a zealous superfan in Guiteau (Macfadyen), a mentally ill grifter who’s determined to worm his way into the president’s inner circle. Since D.C. security was hilariously lax back in the day, it’s all too easy for this weirdo to accost Garfield and the members of his camp, whether he’s crashing the inaugural ball or pleading his case to Arthur as the sloshed veep pukes his guts out in a bathroom stall.

Death By Lightning isn’t interested in nuance. The show portrays Garfield as a person of pure righteousness. (Take a shot every time his wife, Betty Gilpin’s Crete, assures him that he’s “a good man.”) Conkling, meanwhile, is a mustache-twirling villain, grinning like the Joker as he schemes, strong-arms, and revels in the president’s misfortune. Yes, Garfield was a progressive social reformer far ahead of his time, and political history is full of morally bankrupt men like Conkling. But it’s hard to be invested in characters who are so black-and-white. More nuance is reserved for Guiteau, but we find out so little about him that he’s ultimately a cipher.

Macfadyen sure makes us wonder, though. You can hear the time bomb ticking down every time he elbows his way into a scene, his charm all too quickly giving way to wild-eyed fervor. His sweaty desperation makes us understand why everyone keeps letting him off the hook. How could a guy this ridiculous pose a real threat? The actor delivers an unsettling portrayal of a man led by his delusions of grandeur.

Shannon does what he can with Garfield, but playing a paragon is a thankless job. Still, he brings a quiet magnetism to the twentieth president. (If you saw him speak at the RNC, you’d likely vote for him, too). His earnest commitment to reform makes the tragedy of his death hit home—and make viewers wonder what could have been if he’d gotten to serve his full term.

As Arthur, Offerman answers the question: What if Ron Swanson was a dickhead? Like Pawnee’s iconic parks director, Arthur giggles like a little kid, loves whiskey, and would rather gorge himself on red meat than run the government. He’s so lovable that it’s easy to forget he’s kind of a monster.

The most compelling performance in Death By Lightning comes from the always surprising Gilpin (fresh off tackling a very different first lady in Broadway’s Oh, Mary!). Crete is Garfield’s shrewd protector, whether he’s getting played by Conkling or submitting to the barbaric treatment of the White House doctor (portrayed by Željko Ivanek). When a grief-stricken Crete visits Guiteau the night before his execution, Gilpin delivers a ferocious monologue that’s topped off, the next morning, by Guiteau’s ignominious hanging. Unfortunately, all that work is undone by a saccharine epilogue.

And therein lies the show’s central problem: Like America in the aftermath of the Civil War, Death By Lightning doesn’t know what it wants to be. If the first episode’s opening text (“This is a story about two men the world forgot”) is anything to go by, Makowsky aims to explore the unlikely parallels between Garfield and Guiteau. But ultimately, the show feels like a chronicle of a bunch of stuff that happened. It may as well have been called A Series Of Unfortunate Events.

Death by Lightning premieres November 6 on Netflix