Netflix Mini-Series MANIAC Poster, wtih Emma Stone and Jonah Hill
If you’re looking for a platonic tryst with a Netflix mini-series, try MANIAC. You may have already sampled it (since its premier on Sept. 21, 2018) and found it slow in the beginning episodes. This gradual unfolding is by design. From the get-go episode “The Chosen One,” MANIAC doesn’t seek to thrill, scare, or romance. The show just wants to be friends.
To use Aldous Huxley’s term, we are each “island universes.” And this state of disconnect with potential is early MANIAC in a nutshell. Friendships take time and the mini-series takes its time to establish an almost-reality setting, the tension of its disconnect / connect theme, and its complex central characters. The schizophrenic Owen Milgrim. The anti-social Annie Landsberg.
All said, this sci-fi drama-comedy is more satisfying than any TV I’ve seen in a while. I watched MANIAC twice through. And thought twice, even enjoyed the dense first episode much more the second time.
Created by Patrick Somerville and Cary Joji Fukunaga, the ten-episode series follows Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill). Miserable strangers until they meet through a high-risk experimental drug trial. Through the trial the protagonists experience a complex mixture of biographical and genre-hopping hallucinations.
Recent Comments