Edwin Stanton was Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, confidant and friend, as well as an asthmatic and a workaholic. In the wake of the president’s assassination, he led a 12-day search for the killer, John Wilkes Booth, trying to get ahead of Booth’s plans while coping with his own ill health. I think it’s a toss-up as to whether he or I, after getting through Apple TV+’s miniseries about his endeavours, ended up more exhausted.
There is a lot going on in Manhunt. There is the assassination and the cat-and-mouse chase itself, obviously. But we know (roughly) how that ended, so to add a sense of jeopardy and uncertainty, the timeline is vastly fragmented. We begin on the day Lincoln is killed, then cut to 30 minutes before, then 10, then five days, then 10 hours, and sometimes we take leaps of years. Usually these are clearly captioned but sometimes they are not, and that’s almost more confusing than captioning nothing at all.
Then there is the History-with-a-capital-H. All the period details scream: “I’m correct, me!” A full Lincoln impersonation is delivered (by Hamish Linklater) and careful exposition is provided about the Confederacy, the Union, Reconstruction, Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower) failing to share the abolitionist vision, the conspiracy to kill not just Lincoln but other cabinet members, too, the secessionist south and most points in between.
Then there is the resonating, the parallels drawn between 1865 America and the US of today – both in a state of high emotion, both at tipping points, both still riven by racism and strewn with politicians who will exploit people’s bigotries and fears for their own advancement. “This is America,” says Stanton (Tobias Menzies) at one point to an antagonist. “We replace our presidents with elections, not coups.” Take that, Proud Boys!
It is all quality stuff. But it takes itself very seriously and the insistent detailing makes you yearn for the leaner, keener beast buried within this lumbering one to break free. The chase is the thing, but its narrative is so broken by the time-jumps and diversions that it becomes another handful of pieces in a jigsaw puzzle rather than a driving force carrying us with it.
But oh – the performances! The performances lift and save it at every turn. Most obviously is a surely career-making turn by Anthony Boyle as the actor-cum-assassin Booth, as charismatic as he is dangerous, and convinced of the rightness of his cause – which is ultimately less the Confederates’ than the belief that John Wilkes Booth deserves to be famous, however he can achieve that. The meticulous, principled Stanton is his polar opposite and Menzies’ customary spareness as an actor is the perfect match.
Their scenes vitally leaven the whole, but they are ably backed by the rest of the cast; especially Lovie Simone as Mary Simms, a former slave to a doctor who treats Booth’s broken leg after he escapes, and who despite a lifetime of fear becomes a key witness in the trial. Lili Taylor, too, is mesmerising as the volatile Mary Anne Lincoln, and Betty Gabriel does so much in her few scenes as the widow’s dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley that they should be cut together as a masterclass. She and Simone bring home just how much was at stake as they face the prospect of going backwards, of this mighty chance to abolish so much of their people’s misery being lost.
This evocation and the cast are enough to make what would otherwise feel quite overwhelmingly like medicine go down and make Manhunt worth the time and careful attention required from viewers.
• Manhunt is available on Apple TV+
