Around 10 years ago, it looked like we might be in line for an Abraham Lincoln Expanded Universe. Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar for portraying the stove-pipe hat-wearing American icon in Spielberg’s Lincoln (based on a true story). Benjamin Walker decidedly did not win an Oscar for playing the same character in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (not based on a true story).
Everyone was reading Team of Rivals, a nonfiction book about how Lincoln had stuffed his cabinet with politicians who secretly hated one another. There was George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo, the magical realist winner of the Booker Prize that explored the president’s grief following the death of his son. I half-expected Lincoln to pop up in the next Marvel movie.
In the event, Lincoln-mania dwindled as quickly as it had arrived and has laid dormant ever since. Perhaps that will change with Apple TV+’s new drama Manhunt, a slow, sumptuous, and exceedingly starchy retelling of the hunt for the president’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth (Antony Boyle).
It’s a riveting story – at least on paper. Lincoln (Hamish Linklater) has only just brought peace to a fractured nation and is looking forward to a night at the theatre with his wife (Lili Taylor) when vainglorious actor Booth jumps into his private box and attacks the Commander-in-Chief.
Unfortunately, Manhunt suffers from the same ailment that has bedevilled several other recent prestige dramas – including Disney +’s Shōgun and Mr and Mrs Smith on Prime Video: it is achingly dull. There is no urgency to the script by Monica Beletsky (The Leftovers, Friday Night Lights) and watching it feels like wading through a monotonous novel that Lincoln himself might have read in the mid-19th century. It is well put together and visually gorgeous but poorly attuned to our modern, fleeting attention spans.
Even the scene in which Booth kills the president at Ford’s Theatre feels bloodless and underwhelming. It is also confusing. Dim lighting makes it hard to make out whether the assailant has viciously attacked the president or just bear-hugged him. Lincoln’s death inflicted a psychological scar to America that remains painful to this day but, in Manhunt, it is over in a flash. My first instinct was to rewind to see if I’d missed something.
With Lincoln felled, it falls to his devoted war secretary, Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), to track down the killer. But this manhunt proceeds at a rather leisurely pace. Stanton does not seem in much of a hurry as he questions employees at Ford’s Theatre about how Booth was able to vanish into the night so conveniently. He mooches around, like an eccentric detective in a cosy (read: boring) crime caper.
Booth has meanwhile shacked up with a sympathetic surgeon who behaves atrociously towards his African-American servants. As he recovers in bed from the injuries sustained in the assault on the president, we get an insight into his egotism and hunger for the spotlight. It is suggested that the killer flees to Mexico – rather than make for the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. “I am not a symbol in Mexico,” he whines. “I am a symbol in Richmond.”
Manhunt arrives at a fraught moment, with this year’s US presidential election prompting yet another bout of soul-searching about the state of American democracy and the fragility of America is one of the series’ themes. Early on, an underling warns Stanton that if it is proved that Booth has connections to the Confederacy (which has only just surrendered) all hell could break loose.
Stanton only looks mildly peeved at the suggestion. But he doesn’t have anything of substance to say – a response that perfectly illustrates the great weakness of Manhunt. It’s a skilfully put together drama yet its po-facedness and glum pacing makes for lacklustre viewing. Given the raw materials – political skulduggery, weird hats, magnificent mutton chops – Manhunt should be engrossing. Alas, I was bored.
‘Manhunt’ is streaming on Apple TV+.