Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Manhunt’ On Apple TV+, A Thriller About The Search For John Wilkes Booth After Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

Abraham Lincoln’s assassination is probably in the top five of American historical events that is universally known about: The where, the when and the who are all known well. But after John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, he eluded capture for 12 days. A new series imagines what that manhunt was like, centered around the investigative efforts of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

MANHUNT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “APRIL 14, 1865. THE DAY OF THE ASSASSINATION.” A parade of soldiers is greeted with cheers, five days after the Confederacy surrendered. We see a window slam shut, and a hand with the initials “JWB” scrawled on it.

The Gist: “JWB” is John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle). He and a group of others who are completely opposed to the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves are planning to topple the federal government in Washington. He and his group plan to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower) and Secretary of State William Henry Seward (Larry Pine), and, if they’re lucky, assassinate President Abraham Lincoln (Hamish Linklater).

Seward is attacked in his home by a man who brought a pharmacy box as his way in; he stabs the security guard, makes his way upstairs and tussles with Seward’s daughter before he stabs Seward in his bed (his gun ended up jamming, so all he had to use was a knife).

As Booth makes his way to Ford’s Theater, where he knows Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd (Lili Taylor) are going to take in “My American Cousin,” we flash back five days to when Lincoln and his wartime staff, including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) got word that Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army surrendered at Appomattox. Lincoln, as folksy as ever, knows he can now push Reconstruction, including rights for the newly-freed enslaved population.

But not everyone agrees with that stance. The night of the assassination, Booth is downing some shots at the bar across from the theater, and he talks to someone about those new rights, spitting out the n-word in the process. When he finds out that the person is Lincoln’s bodyguard, he finds an opening. Because he’s known at the theater — he’s an actor who recently acted in a play there — he easily slips up to Lincoln’s box, shoots him in the head, then jumps onto the stage, screams “Sic Semper Tyrannis!” and runs off.

Stanton, who has already been called to Seward’s house to investigate just what happened there, gets called to the scene of Lincoln’s shooting; the president is bleeding to death in a house across the street. More than one witness places Booth at the scene, but Stanton is flabbergasted that he was able to get away, given all the people who saw him and recognized him.

Lincoln dies the next morning, and for now the country has no leadership; Johnson’s potential assassin ended up not going through with it, but given that this is the first time a U.S. president has been assassinated, the whole government is in flux. Stanton wonders, too, if the Confederate government put Booth up to this, which would threaten the newly-achieved peace.

In the meantime, Booth decamps at a farm in Maryland, where the broken leg he suffered jumping out of Lincoln’s box is treated by Dr. Samuel Mudd (Matt Walsh).

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Cross the miniseries Abraham Lincoln with a police procedural like FBI, and you have Manhunt.

Our Take: Created by Monica Beletsky and based on the book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson, Manhunt tries to be a few kinds of shows at the same time. It tries to capture just how tenuous the victory over the Confederacy was in the days after their surrender, and how Lincoln’s assassination almost plunged the country back into war. It also tries to show just how many people wanted the status quo to hold, especially when it came to the country’s formerly enslaved people.

But at its heart, Manhunt is a procedural and conspiracy thriller, showing how Stanton led the search for Booth, who was assisted by a number of sympathizers and co-conspirators. Inasmuch that the details of that manhunt are a part of American history that are little known, watching a fictionalized version of it is of interest. But, also given that we know history’s broad strokes, it’s not like there’s a big mystery with lots of shocking twists and turns for the audience to sink their teeth into.

Menzies is properly stoic as Stanton, seemingly able to keep his cool despite all of the madness going on around him. Even periodic asthma attacks don’t sideline him. And watching him investigate the assassination in the crude, haphazard way due to it being the 1860s is also interesting to watch.

Boyle might be even more fascinating as Booth. We don’t know a ton about Booth 160 years after the fact; it surprises most people to find out that Booth was a well-known stage actor and stuntman from a famous acting family, not just some unknown nutjob. And Boyle’s portrayal of Booth shows that he has the arrogance of someone who has let a degree of fame go to his head, combined with an insecurity about his more-famous family members, his height and a whole bunch of other issues. He kills Lincoln almost as much out of a desire to be famous as he does because he thinks Lincoln is a tyrant who is bad for the country.

We found Linklater’s version of Lincoln to be interesting; he plays the emancipator as a guy who is folksy and a bit daft but someone who commands respect from his staff, including Stanton.

He’s one of a number of mainly comedic actors that Beletsky has cast in decidedly non-comedic roles, including Taylor as Mary Todd Lincoln, Walsh as Dr. Mudd and Patton Oswalt as Detective Lafayette Baker. It’s been shown by Vince Gilligan, Matthew Weiner and other auteurs that comedic actors have the versatility to handle dramatic roles, but given how serious the first episode was, we’re not sure what the purpose was of putting these comedians in these roles, other than just being counterintuitive.

It’s one of the head-scratching aspects of Manhunt that makes us wonder just where this show is going after the first episode. The piecemeal timeline, which seems to go between post-assassination to pre-assassination and back again in rapid succession, makes things even more head-scratching. But Menzies and the rest of the cast do such a good job, and the first episode moved so well, that we’re going to give the show the benefit of the doubt.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Thomas Eckert (Damian O’Hare) asks Stanton, “What if the Confederacy is behind the assassination?” Stanton replies, “Then I’d have to start another war.”

Sleeper Star: Lovie Simone plays Mary Simms, a servant in Dr. Mudd’s home who may have a lot to do with how Booth gets captured.

Most Pilot-y Line: Stanton tells a ranting Mary Todd Lincoln, stationed outside the room where her husband is dying, “Now is not the time to get hysterical.” No, we’d think that would be the exact time to get hysterical.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re holding out hope that Manhunt focuses in as the series goes along. But the first episode is quite unfocused, and it’s only saved by the performances of Menzies and the rest of the cast.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.