Suspicion of globalism, shadowy far-right organisations, race and identity, social media manipulation, suspicion of the so-called mainstream media, deep stateism… if you were going to draw up a conspiracy thriller with all the most pressing contemporary themes in it, you’d surely include pretty much all of the above.
It’s these elements that are sending the world cuckoo at the moment, so it does feel a bit uncomfortable seeing all of them laid out, stuffed into a fast-paced and generally enjoyable eight-part series, which has just dropped on Netflix.
Colman Domingo – heck of a name, that – plays Muncie Daniels, an African-American former activist whose father is languishing in jail after killing a man decades before. Daniels is now a manicured rent-a-quote CNN pundit and general media mouthpiece.
He decides he needs to get away for a little while, so rents a cabin in the Poconos mountains (in Pennsylvania) to write his book. (How very 21st century.) While there, he meets a chap in a neighbouring cabin, a friendly type who tells Daniels that if he ever needs anything, he just needs to call and ask. So when the media personality needs some propane he does indeed pop round to his neighbour, only to find him hacked to pieces on the floor of what looks like his outdoor sauna. Shocked and confused, Daniels is attacked and chased through the forest, and fights off his pursuers (killing one of them).
Soon after, he alerts the police to what happened but after being taken back to the neighbour’s cabin he and the cops see that there’s nothing there – no body, no bodies in the forest, no nothing.
And this is when The Madness becomes a full-blown Hitchcockian little number, a la North By Northwest or Strangers On A Train – Muncie Daniels is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and soon he’s being framed for the murder(s). Why? He’s high-profile and headstrong and is ripe for manipulation, but also the people doing the framing are members of a far-right group called The Forge.
After being fired from CNN, with seemingly the entirety of Philadelphia’s law enforcement services after him, he goes on the run, goes rogue and flies solo under the radar in a bid to find out who the people who died were, why they were killed and who killed them. The only people he makes contact with? His ex-wife Elena (Marsha Stephanie Blake) and son Demetrious, his semi-estranged daughter Kellie (Gabrielle Graham) and a FBI agent, Franco Quinones (John Ortiz).
He sneaks about the city initially looking like John Shaft, but then, as things get hairier for him, joggers and a hoodie. On his tail are shadowy figures from shadowy organisations, who, initially, are one step ahead of him and piling on the misery (ie increasing the pressure on him, twisting the screw by releasing information to the press about him, sending their lackeys out to shit him up). The Madness does a good job of conveying Daniels’ feelings of paranoia – think cars screeching off for no reason, a random person on the street looking at him for one second too long.
But then we come to the plot. The shadowy organisation leads to another shadowy organisation and then another shadowy organisation, with the Big Bad leading to another Big Bad and then, finally, a Big Big Bad. It’s a big Matryoshka doll of a conspiracy thriller, but there really are only so many shadowy organisations you can take seriously before all credibility is lost.
And, I have to say, all of this deep-state conspiracy stuff feels very American and unhinged. Yes, all of that sort of stuff is spreading around the world, but it still feels like something (or some things) that is a bit… well, you just have to shake your head at it because none of feels real or relevant.
I do have to talk about race, though. The Madness is the second series in a row (see my review of Amazon Prime’s Cross) where an African-American has been in the starring role, which is absolutely brilliant. This might be a fairly enjoyable but average thriller, but Colman Domingo (still a great name) is hugely charismatic in the lead role, and there’s some nice subversion going on (ie the roles usually the preserve of white alpha-male types are now being shared around, and networks and streamers are showing the courage to do so). Subsequently, some of the strongest elements in The Madness are character-based. They’re sketched and written nicely, the relationships between them feel authentic and interesting, and the neighbourhoods of north Philadelphia have really good working-class energy. It also tries, at least, to study racial identity in 21st-century, post-truth America. So bravo to that.
Characters strong, plot not so strong.
Paul Hirons
