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- Apple TV+
- Mar 14, 2024
- Apple TV+
- Mar 14, 2024
Summary The seven-part limited series about Edwin Stanton's (Tobias Menzies) search for Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth is based on James L. Swanson's nonfiction book.
Created By: Monica Beletsky
- Apple TV+
- Mar 14, 2024
- Apple TV+
- Mar 14, 2024
Summary The seven-part limited series about Edwin Stanton's (Tobias Menzies) search for Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth is based on James L. Swanson's nonfiction book.
Created By: Monica Beletsky
Season Episodes
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 22 Critic Reviews
65
45% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
55% Mixed
12 Reviews
12 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 22 Critic Reviews
65
45% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
55% Mixed
12 Reviews
12 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The series illuminates details left out of other standard Civil War stories, and it will have you looking up the real history on Wikipedia. A special emphasis on the Wall Street tycoons who supported the Confederacy (and became rich from the slave trade) illustrates parallels with modern-day politics. Good art tells a story you can't stop thinking about, but great art tells a story that makes you think about real life.
Well-played and strikingly made, Manhunt is part crime potboiler, part political thriller, part historical overview — and each strand works a treat.
It's in many ways a subtle drama, but is also highly emotionally charged. What it lacks in pace, and there are times at which this drags the show down, it does thankfully make up for in powerful character drama.
The series is well furnished and costumed and moves with pep through its alternating scenes of action and reflection; it is various enough not to get dull. But it’s very much a TV show, with TV beats, made to entertain before it’s made to inform. The problem with any docudrama is that once you know a few things are wrong or fabricated, you begin to question the rest of it.
This show manages to invoke this feeling of perilousness and adrenaline when it can get past its two worst compulsions: to invoke contemporary resonances whenever it gets a chance, and to pack in detail through copious and confusing flashbacks.
This is historical fiction at its most facile, too self-righteous to be persuasive about the historical parallels it’s trying to illustrate and too listless to make watching it feel like little more than required AP History homework.
It’s just unfortunate that the whole series isn’t as lively and provocative as its most memorable moments.
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