Apple TV’s Manhunt is best when it just lets Lincoln be a bro

There is a second that looms giant over every part else within the pilot of Apple TV’s post-Civil War drama, Manhunt, a dialog that can hang-out Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) for the remainder of his life. He’s exhausting at work in his workplace, placing collectively the plans for Reconstruction, when Abraham Lincoln (Midnight Mass’ Hamish Linklater) is available in tossing a baseball and invitations him to the theater tonight (Ulysses S. Grant flaked to hold along with his spouse). Stanton is intrigued, drawn in by his good friend’s straightforward allure, however in the end backs out — he additionally owes his spouse a evening collectively. And so Lincoln strolls out, bemoaning that he’ll just be hanging out with Mary’s buddies as he sees Our American Cousin.

The relaxation is historical past: That evening, Lincoln would be assassinated on the theater. Andrew Johnson would take the oath of workplace the next day. And Stanton — as Manhunt depicts — would spend the following 12 days looking down Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, and the remainder of his life questioning what would’ve occurred if he stated sure to a night on the theater.

It’s no shock that Stanton would possibly eternally ponder the highway not taken, though he made positive somebody was guarding Lincoln that evening. It’s a thought that’s extremely compelling as Manhunt turns Stanton’s survivor’s guilt time and again. His connection to Lincoln makes it all of the extra provocative: Losing a good friend like this is a tragedy. But when you’re additionally secretary of battle to one of the necessary presidents in United States historical past, trusted along with his safety and that of the nation, your actions have bigger penalties. Every alternative Johnson makes (or doesn’t make) within the postwar panic, each new vector level for the nation, hangs on Stanton’s soul, a fixed reminder of his failures and what we might’ve had.

As a interval drama, Manhunt is tasked with studying viewers in on a lot of vernacular and particular historic context. Too usually its script cuts corners, making issues so simple as doable, eschewing ambiguity in favor of a tidy narrative. The present grinds to a halt each time somebody is compelled to underline the purpose of the scene you just noticed. It can be clumsy about working in exposition, or tackling Lincoln as a Great Man™, and massive moments usually include the need to be seen as huge moments, reasonably than feeling like them. It’s exhausting for there to be sufficient surroundings to chew on when most everybody in Manhunt looks like they should cease and inform you how it tastes.

Stanton (Tobias Menzies) on the back of a horse in the woods looking inquisitively off-camera

But it’s Menzies’ efficiency that grounds the present even when its dialogue can’t totally join these dots. Every scene post-assassination has a heaviness to it, even when Stanton is energized on the hunt for Booth. Menzies brings in a type of evenly manic vitality, a ferocity of offense to masks the deeply rooted guilt already taking maintain in his soul. It’s his efficiency that best ensures Lincoln’s loss is felt even when it’s unstated, or when the present will get too busy. It’s this angle that provides Manhunt its juice, a reminder that Lincoln the parable was Lincoln the person at the start, and that he was mourned as not just a compatriot but in addition a companion.

So it’s no shock that the second in Stanton’s workplace looms giant in Manhunt’s narrative. It’s the primary scene we get to see Lincoln as just a dude. He comes into his good friend’s workplace, plops his ft up on his desk, jokes round, and bemoans his bud’s must put within the time. It’s a distinctly informal really feel, Abraham Lincoln: The Legend, solely within the correct (if distracting) make-up and costuming the present layers Linklater behind. This is greater than a man who might rouse a room and alter how we see ourselves as a nation; he was additionally a pal you may look as much as. That’s the loss that Manhunt makes us really feel, and what makes the stakes for Stanton’s mission really feel so extremely excessive.