"Death by Lightning": review

Michael Shannon as James Garfield and Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Guiteau

A November 2025 addition to the ever-growing stable of Netflix movies and miniseries, "Death by Lightning" stars Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen as President James Garfield and his assassin, Charles Guiteau. Garfield was the US's 20th president, shot by Guiteau in 1881, barely a season into Garfield's first and only term. The story shows the parallel, intersecting, and radically different life-paths of Garfield and Guiteau. After being shot, Garfield lingered on for another two months before dying of sepsis related to the over-probing of his bullet wound in a vain attempt to find and extract the assassin's bullet. The miniseries is based on a 2011 nonfiction monograph, Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard. I have not read the book; the miniseries, which came out barely a month ago, was suggested to me by my buddy Mike. The series also stars Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham, Bradley Whitford, and Nick Offerman. Whigham and Offerman appeared together in "Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning." I've seen Gilpin in "The Hunt" and "Mrs. Davis." Whitford is, of course, no stranger to political dramas, having been a regular on "The West Wing" for years. The phrase death by lightning is from a remark made by Garfield to justify his lack of worry about assassination after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865: according to Garfield, you can't worry about assassination any more than you can worry about being struck by lightning, so the series's title is a metaphor for the assassination itself. One of the series's central themes is lost opportunity: James Garfield, already considered by many historians to have been a great if flawed man, could have been a superb president; Charles Guiteau, meanwhile, lived a life of wasted potential: smart and articulate, he spent most of his final years as a moocher, a grifter, and a well-spoken, mentally unstable fabulist—probably a sign of schizophrenia. Both Garfield and Guiteau have been largely forgotten these days (I know I'd forgotten that Garfield had been assassinated; when I think of assassinated presidents, the three who immediately come to mind are Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy); Guiteau's current level of obscurity is highlighted when, at the very beginning of the series, Guiteau's formaldehyde-preserved brain, still bottled, rolls out of a US Army Medical Museum warehouse crate and is stared at by uncomprehending workers sometime in 1969.

Spanning only four episodes, the series covers James Garfield's return to politics after a period spent working on his Ohio farm and living with his wife Lucretia "Crete" Garfield (Gilpin) and their children. Garfield reluctantly accepts the opportunity to back a fellow Republican at the party's convention in Chicago. An honest man and veteran with a distaste for politics and muckraking, Garfield gives a speech on behalf of his chosen man John Sherman, brother of the famous/infamous General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had burned his way through Georgia during the Civil War. But Garfield's speech attracts attention to Garfield himself, and he is placed on the list of Republican nominees, much to the consternation of Sherman. After many rounds of deliberation and voting, Garfield—a progressive reformer—is chosen as the Republicans' nominee for president, and Chester A. Arthur (Offerman)—a "Stalwart" reactionary conservative and "machine politician" who works for fellow Stalwart Roscoe Conkling (Whigham, and Roscoe Conkling was a name I was sure I'd heard before)—is chosen as Garfield's running mate. Some time is spent exploring the idea that Garfield, despite his protestations, actually wanted to be nominated. Meanwhile, the story also follows the life of Charles Guiteau, a man with some talent, a lot of imagination, and very big dreams who is also directionless and reliant on the good graces of his ever-tolerant sister. Guiteau's main problem, though, is his mental instability, which leads to fits of anger, potential violence, impulsivity, and an overactive imagination. Guiteau latches onto Garfield's candidacy and begins to fancy himself a booster who has helped Garfield to gain the presidency; after many disappointing attempts to interact with Garfield, Guiteau eventually sours on him and instead fixates on Vice President Arthur, whom Guiteau is now convinced must become president—a state of affairs that Guiteau will bring into being by killing Garfield.

Because this miniseries is done by Netflix, it contains certain "tells" that indicate the political leanings of its makers. When Garfield steps out of a carriage in 1800s-era downtown Chicago, we immediately see black and Asian people dressed to the nines and walking through the streets. A white crowd in front of Garfield's Ohio home shouts "China out!" as if to parody modern conservative sentiments about immigration. Garfield's eldest daughter gets angry at her father when she thinks he's hypocritically ignoring the plight of Chinese workers after having pledged himself to the black cause. The main political conflict we see is between the Republican reformers (who stand in for today's left-liberals) and the Stalwart wing of the Republican party, which is corrupt and roughly corresponds to today's America-firsters. (I doubt Garfield would have been chosen as a subject for a Netflix film had he not been a progressive Republican, but sources contend that Garfield, while being ideologically closer to the Half-Breeds, was trying to bridge the intra-party gap to unite everyone under one banner.) The Democrats, who were pro-slavery before and during the Civil War, are nowhere to be found in the series, which focuses relentlessly on the Republicans' internal strife.

But by the end of the series, I began to see that certain scenes and events depicted in the show could be interpreted differently depending on one's ideological leanings. Garfield could be seen as a compromiser and deal-maker who parallels the current Orange Man in terms of having progressive leanings in some areas. (Trump is still, in my opinion, a 90s-era Democrat with his "America First," pro-worker, anti-globalist ideas.) In the show, Garfield's eldest daughter gets over her idealistic anger at her father once she cools down and recognizes the pragmatic realities of his situation. Chester Arthur's conversion from Garfield's political enemy to his posthumous ally can be seen as a parallel to JD Vance, who started off as a Trump critic but is now a huge MAGA partisan, inspired by Trump himself to embrace his own metanoia. The increasingly unstable Guiteau is made out to be a proto-hippie who spent five years in a "free love" colony, although he seemed to be the only one not engaged in wild sex (the show contains a few moments of sex and nudity); a conservative will pick up on the show's implied association between the hippie worldview and insanity.

The series was full of intentional and unintentional quirks, callbacks, and references. I went snooping around my old reviews for the name "Roscoe Conklin" (not Conkling) and found it: she was Jack Reacher's love interest in Season 1 of "Reacher." I think author Lee Child knew what he was doing when he named her character. Bradley Whitford, as James Blaine, gets a brief moment where he speaks French to Guiteau (who can't speak French despite his French surname), saying "L'habit ne fait pas le moine," i.e., "The habit does not make the monk." You can't judge a book by its cover. In a much later encounter, Blaine flat-out tells Guiteau that he thinks Guiteau is little more than an insistent, persistent parasite. Macfadyen, as Guiteau, was familiar to me thanks to his role as the ill-fated Mr. Paradox in "Deadpool & Wolverine," in which his head is physically invaded by villainess Cassandra Nova's probing fingers. Macfadyen acted the part of Guiteau well, though, doing a nearly perfect, if slightly over-enunciated, American accent. In terms of quirks, I had to wonder at some expressions that sounded to me like linguistic anachronisms. Did early-1800s people say "motherfucker"? Was the phrase "machine politics" really a thing back then? Did people exclaim "Right?!" in vehement agreement with their interlocutors? Did they ever shout "Eat shit!"?

Overall, I found "Death by Lightning" to be a watchable four-hour series that, according to the sources I consulted afterward, was more or less accurate in its portrayal of Garfield and Guiteau's mutual history in the broad strokes. I suspect there were, as with most biopics, plenty of changes and embellishments. I couldn't help noticing that the "Game of Thrones" team was heavily involved in this show: it was partly produced by "D&D," a.k.a. David Benioff and Dan "DB" Weiss, and the series's composer was Ramin Djawadi. The always-changing animated opening credits, a metaphor for politics (and possibly human existence) as a machine, also had that "Game of Thrones" feel to them. I did not, however, think that this series was anywhere near the quality of "John Adams," which to my mind is one of the best historical series I've ever seen.

That said, "Death by Lightning" still gets my seal of approval. It's well acted by all involved, features a lot of charming period scenery and costumery, and is a meditation not only on the question of lost opportunities but also on the failures of the medicine of that era: advances in germ theory and sepsis were only just being made at the time, and Garfield, lying prone in the White House, then in New Jersey, is cursed with an incompetent doctor (Željko Ivanek) who probably causes Garfield's death. Macfadyen's Guiteau gives us a good idea of how one form of mental illness (and/or bad character) might manifest itself, and of how little the people of the time could have done for a sick person like Guiteau. Nick Offerman as the thuggish, pigheaded Chester A. Arthur is the main source of comic relief—sometimes so much so that I couldn't figure out whether I was watching a drama or a comedy. How true-to-life Charles Guiteau's character arc really is in the show, I have no clue. I guess I'll have to read the book, which my buddy Mike has also recommended to me.