‘Manhunt’ Is Too Boring for a Series About the Search for Abraham Lincoln’s Assassin

Put yourself in the buttoned-up boots of the average American citizen in April of 1865. A divided, devastated nation was living through the Civil War’s bitter and bloody final weeks, assured that the Union side was likely to prevail but uncertain about how—or even if—the former Confederate states would be readmitted. Then on April 16, seven days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. News traveled slowly back then, so the citizenry was gripped by confusion and fear as rumors spread about what happened.

Sound like a good premise for a TV show? Well, it’s already been a good premise for a book: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, James L. Swanson’s acclaimed 2007 non-fiction bestseller. Swanson transported readers back to those dramatic two weeks after Lincoln’s death, as the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton organized a search for Booth that involved investigating the network of wealthy saboteurs who had been secretly supporting the Confederacy.

The Apple TV+ limited series adaptation of Manhunt was created by Monica Belensky (a writer on Parenthood and Friday Night Lights) and features the work of directors Carl Franklin (best known for the excellent crime movies One False Move and Devil in a Blue Dress) and John Dahl (Red Rock West, Rounders). The show has a formidable cast, led by Outlander’s Tobias Menzies as Stanton and Masters of the Air’s Anthony Boyle as Booth. Supporting roles are filled out by the likes of Patton Oswalt, Matt Walsh, Betty Gabriel, Lili Taylor and—as Lincoln, in flashbacks—Hamish Linklater.

This is a talented group of people, telling a story so fascinating it would be hard to screw up. And they don’t screw it up. But they don’t exactly turn it into can’t-miss television either.

The main issue is a lack of imagination. Manhunt is, to a fault, a modern prestige TV drama, with all that too often entails: a gray color palette, dim lighting, diffuse storytelling, and a dreary earnestness. Compared to something like Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln—which made the political battles of the Lincoln era into marvelous theater, with the help of some punchy and pointed Tony Kushner dialogue—Manhunt can feel stiff and tentative. It’s as though the creative team was afraid that if the series was too entertaining, it wouldn’t read as “important.”

It is, however, entertaining enough. A lot of the credit for that is due to the cast, who (with the writers’ and directors’ help, of course) find ways to shape their characters even when they’re stuck with a lot of dry exposition. Boyle is especially strong, capturing Booth’s vain, delusional certainty that he’ll be greeted as a hero if he can just escape into Virginia. Menzies, meanwhile, puts across Stanton’s quiet intensity and sense of righteousness, as he insists the United States has to draw a line at murdering presidents or “there is no line.” (He says this in two different episodes, which is either a slip-up by the show’s dialogue editors or indicative of how much Stanton means it.)

Even smaller roles like Glenn Morshower’s take on President Andrew Johnson have an impressive heft. Sure, Morshower is often reduced to delivering lines like, “Explain Reconstruction to me like I’m a schoolboy,” meant solely to help the audience get a quick history lesson. But he also fully inhabits Johnson’s shaky place in American history, as the man who re-stabilized the nation yet also let his racism keep him from following through on Lincoln’s more integrationist Reconstruction plans.

Manhunt is the kind of show that could be called “a Wikipedia watch,” where viewers keep one finger on the pause button so they can look up historical figures, to see how their real stories line up with the show’s. Some of these guys—including Johnson, Stanton, federal investigator Lafayette Baker (Oswalt), Booth’s emergency physician Samuel Mudd (Walsh) and Booth’s killer Boston Corbett (William Mark McCullough)—have seen their historical reputations shift across the centuries. If nothing else, Beletsky and her writers do have a strong point of view on these people and this era, zeroing in on their failures… and paying special attention to how their political cowardice kept many Black Americans subjugated, post-slavery.

It’s just unfortunate that the whole series isn’t as lively and provocative as its most memorable moments, where—like Spielberg and Kushner’s Lincoln—the vision of the America of 160 years ago reflects the American of today. The best parts of Manhunt concern Stanton’s conscious effort to keep Booth from becoming a martyr that defeated Southerners could rally around. He succeeded for a while. But even in 1865, people with nefarious agendas stood ready to revise history, giving the populace a new and insidious way to interpret their own past.