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Stream It Or Skip It?

The “one man crusade” thriller tends to portray that “one man” as almost superhuman, who has instincts and abilities that even the most able people in real life don’t. The key to shows like this is to make sure that the main character is put in situations that are plausible that he or she can get out of in plausible ways. We see that potential in a new Netflix thriller starring Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Colman Domingo.

THE MADNESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Misty woods at dawn. A man lying next to a tree wakes up and looks around.

The Gist: Muncie Daniels (Colman Domingo), an author and occasional television pundit, is the man who wakes up in the woods. His leg is injured; he manages to limp to the road and find a diner. He’s about to call the cops on a pay phone when he sees two officers having breakfast. He limps over to them and quips, “Rough morning.”

The day before, we see Muncie go about his day; taking a ju-jitsu lesson, jogging around where he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, and being a substitute host on a CNN show. He’s doing so well on that guest hosting gig, that his lawyer, Kwesi Dupree (Deon Cole), tells him that they want to give him a show. Muncie wants to make sure he has some editorial freedom.

He visits his wife Elena (Marsha Stephanie Blake), from whom he’s separated, and teenage son Demetrius (Thaddeus J. Mixson), before heading out to the Poconos on a writing retreat. There, he runs into the man who lives in the cabin next door, who tells him to knock on his door if he needs anything. When the power goes out that night, Muncie goes over to the neighbor’s cabin, and finds him in the sauna, chopped into pieces.

Before he has time to think, he’s shot at and chased through the woods, but somehow manages to elude the attackers, which is when we see him wake up the next morning. Of course, when he leads the skeptical cops to the cabin, there is no body or evidence, except for a watch band.

He goes back to his Philly apartment and see that it’s been broken into. But the cops there sniff at the report, given the fact that nothing was taken. This is when Muncie takes it upon himself to follow a lead he found in the victim’s truck. It turns out that the victim, Mark Simon (Tahmoh Penikett), is going through a divorce, but he’s informed by an FBI agent, Franco Quinones (John Ortiz), that Simon is a prominent member of a white supremacy organization.

The Madness
Photo: AMANDA MATLOVICH/Netflix

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Think The Fugitive, but the wrongly accused person isn’t running away from the police. We also got Hijack vibes from this show, which we’ll explain below.

Our Take: Created by Stephen Belber, The Madness benefits from Domingo’s performance as Muncie; there’s no doubt that Muncie is a flawed but mostly principled person, and that comes through in Domingo’s portrayal. Because Muncie is going to be spending the season under scrutiny for Simon’s murder and trying to figure out not only who did it but why, he’s going to be the focus, so we’re confident that the show is in good hands because of it.

One thing that struck us during the first episode of The Madness was that most of what we saw was entirely plausible. Unlike the aforementioned Hijack, which had us rolling our eyes from time to time while we were on the edge of our seats, The Madness is more steeped in reality. It’s entirely possible that Muncie is able to elude the people who killed Simon, and it’s definitely plausible that he could be accused of murdering Simon, given all that Simon stands for and simply for the fact that Black men tend not to get extra consideration from law enforcement.

So we’ll see Muncie battling against a wave of accusations, as well as threats from Simon’s fellow racists, to try to figure out exactly what happened. Even though there was a little bit of predictability to the first episode, we’ll take some of that to see Domingo’s intensity.

The Madness
Photo: AMANDA MATLOVICH/Netflix

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: At the motel where he took Elena and Demetrius for their protection, Muncie finds the watch that went with the watchband; someone placed it in his SUV. He looks around the parking lot to see who it might have been.

Sleeper Star: Deon Cole is in a rare serious role as Kwesi, but he brings his usual slyness to dialogue that’s straightforward. Also, Bri Neal plays Laura Jennings, an Alex Jones-like conspiracy theorist who seems to be the only one who believes Muncie.

Most Pilot-y Line: There are points when Muncie is fighting off the killers that he’s bobbing in a marsh, only feet from one of the thugs, but he’s never spotted.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Colman Domingo brings a veracity and intensity to his character in The Madness that elevates what is potentially a run-of-the-mill thriller. But so far, the show isn’t giving us any reason to think it’s getting ridiculous, which is a good thing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.



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