TV-MA | episodes | Drama, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, History | March 15, 2024
Since his death in April of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln has been portrayed more than 130 times in print, on stage, in film, and on TV. During this same period, Lincoln’s assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, has been portrayed just over 20 times. In all but one of these productions (the subpar “Killing Lincoln” from 2013), Booth appeared as a supporting character.
In the sweeping, seven-part series generically titled “Manhunt,” Booth (Anthony Boyle) is the co-lead opposite Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), Lincoln’s Secretary of War, and it ranks among the finest Lincoln-related productions in history, coming in a close second to Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012).
Police Procedural
The meat and potatoes of “Manhunt” is the spider-and-fly dynamic between Booth and Stanton’s considerable government posse, and while it is impeccably appointed with the proper period staging, it plays out like a modern-day, nonlinear police procedural. Despite dying in the first episode, Lincoln (Hamish Linklater) appears via flashback in every subsequent episode.
A Little-Known Character
At first, I questioned why Ms. Beletsky cast Lovie Simone as a former slave and later an indentured servant, Mary Simms, as one of the principal characters—a person I’d never heard of, and I consider myself highly informed regarding all things Lincoln and the Civil War.
The Simms character is pivotal to the narrative as she “worked” for Dr. Samuel Mudd (Matt Walsh), the physician who tended to Booth’s leg, which was broken after he leaped from the presidential box to the stage at Ford’s Theatre in Washington after shooting Lincoln.
The only aside to the Civil War at all in “Manhunt” is a mention of the not-yet-passed 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which made up the lion’s share of the plot in “Lincoln.”
While Mudd steadfastly claimed that Booth had never visited his southern Maryland home prior to the assassination, Simms testified that Mudd had met with Booth on multiple occasions. A map of the area provided to Stanton covering Booth’s proposed path from Washington to Richmond (where he assumed he’d be granted asylum by the defunct Confederate government) went straight through Mudd’s property. The Simms testimony secured Mudd’s life sentence at the conspirator’s trial.
Another little-known fact is included in the Simms subplot: The historically black Howard University in Washington was founded in 1867 by white Union general Oliver Otis Howard. Among the earliest students at Howard was Simms.
My sole issue with “Manhunt,” and it is relatively minor, is in the physical portrayal of Stanton. A relatively stout man with a long, quite unique beard and receding hairline, the Stanton played by Mr. Menzies is slim, clean-shaven, and not balding. It’s not a deal-killer, but I can’t figure out why it was done in this manner.
In “The Conspirator,” Kevin Kline played Stanton and was a closer physical specimen; and in “Lincoln,” Bruce McGill was a dead-on match to him. Also, the timeline of Stanton’s death in the series doesn’t quite jibe with known facts.
Booth the Coward
A man thoroughly committed to the Confederate cause, Booth oddly chose not to bear arms against the Union, which in the eyes of many on both sides of the fight painted him as a blowhard coward. In a scene in the sixth episode, former Confederate soldiers tell him that he only made ending the war worse by killing Lincoln, and they were right.
Portraying such a loathsome character without going histrionic isn’t easy, and Mr. Boyle walks a fine line while doing so.
“Manhunt” is a towering achievement. It fills in many missing gaps in the Lincoln assassination story without regurgitating and recycling past productions. It is wholly original, highly informative, and is worthy of every second of its mammoth running time.
