TV shows don’t get higher stakes than arguably the most consequential tragedy in American history.
With one gunshot in a flag-draped balcony box at D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre, the nation’s greatest president was silenced, robbing us of his leadership in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.
Instead, the dissolving of the Reconstruction Era would lead to Confederate sympathizers propagating “lost cause” myths and newly liberated slaves being plunged into a century of Jim Crow laws with devastating effects.
That’s the severity of what’s on the line in the gripping new miniseries “Manhunt,” which chronicles the tragic assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the dogged hunt for his infamous assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
Based on author James L. Swanson’s acclaimed Edgar Award-winning novel “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer” (2007), the miniseries drops the first two of its seven episodes this Friday on Apple TV+.
The series presents the parallel action of two main characters — one heroic, one despised; on a collision course.
Emmy winner Tobias Menzies (“The Crown”) plays protagonist Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s heartbroken Secretary of War who aggressively leads the search for Booth. Hamish Linklater (“Midnight Mass”) has the tough task of playing Lincoln, lacking the stature of Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012) or Gregory Peck in the CBS miniseries “The Blue and the Gray” (1982), but a sympathetic figure nonetheless reciting legendary lines.
Rounding out the “good guys” are Lili Taylor (“Say Anything”) as the distraught first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who confides in seamstress Elizabeth Keckley (Betty Gabriel, “Get Out”); Patton Oswalt as U.S. investigator Lafayette Baker, who makes it his mission to quickly arrest the conspirators; and Larry Pine as wounded Secretary of State William Seward, who was attacked at home the same night in a coup attempt to topple the Union government.
Anthony Boyle (“The Plot Against America”) is fittingly nasty as the antagonist Booth, portrayed as a racist sympathizer to the failed Confederacy. He’s also a frustrated actor obsessed with his signature mustache, angry that fans say he’s shorter in person, and asking the theater operator why his photo isn’t up on the theater wall.
“Those are legends,” he’s told, to which he snorts back, “After tomorrow, I’ll be the most famous man in the world.”
We also meet his co-conspirators: boardinghouse plotter Mary Suratt (Carrie Lazar) and her son John Surratt (Joshua Mikel), as well as Samuel Mudd (Matt Walsh), the doctor who treated Booth’s broken leg and whose servant Mary Simms (Lovie Simone) suspects something. Glenn Morshower plays Vice President Andrew Johnson, who is painted as having the most to gain, hinting at his possible involvement and perhaps staging his own fake hit.
During these moments, the series dabbles in historical fiction, but it’s plausible enough for dramatic license.
The miniseries is created by Monica Beletsky, who wrote and produced Season 3 of “Fargo,” as well as episodes of “The Leftovers,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood.” Now, she writes or co-writes all of the episodes of “Manhunt,” jumping around in time so much that it can be jarring, but overall, it’s not too hard to follow.
At times, it feels like we’re watching dramatic re-enactments on the History Channel, but it doesn’t really matter because the subject matter is so gripping. The first two episodes are directed by Carl Franklin, who helmed the Denzel Washington flick “Devil in a Blue Dress” (1995). His time on “House of Cards” prepped him for Washington politics, while “Mindhunter” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” helped him to get into the mind of Booth.
“I literally broke a leg,” Booth cackles as he recovers in his hideout, reflecting on leaping from Lincoln’s balcony box down to the stage. Rather than remembering Booth for shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis,” let’s remember him for the last line of the play spoken before the fatal shot was fired: “You sockdologizing old man-trap.” I will most definitely be watching the next five episodes if for no other reason than to see Booth get his comeuppance.
Cue the engine of the whistle-stop tour for Lincoln’s funeral procession.
The manhunt is chugging along right now, full speed ahead.
You can run, but you can’t hide, John Wilkes Booth.
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