The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On

Billed as an adaptation of James L. Swanson’s best-selling 2006 book, “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” the series involves a great many men riding horses, wielding guns, and gritting teeth: costume drama meets police procedural. After shooting Lincoln in the back of the head on the night of April 14, 1865, Booth leaps from the Presidential Box onto the stage, breaking a leg. He flees the theatre and mounts a horse, escaping to Maryland, and then the chase begins, led by Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), the stalwart Secretary of War. “Come here immediately and see if you can find the murderers of the President,” the real Stanton wrote in a telegram to L. C. Baker, the head of the National Detective Police, on April 15th. In “Manhunt,” Baker is played by a miscast Patton Oswalt, who is saddled with some truly dreadful lines—“If you hear something, say something”—and seems more amused than shocked by an assassination that sent the nation into a cascade of mourning. Oswalt’s Baker also doesn’t have that much to do, given that in the show it’s Stanton who not only coördinates the manhunt from the telegraph room at the War Department but also, on the spot, reënacts the crime, collects evidence, inspects footprints, follows clues, cracks codes, interrogates witnesses, and even, implausibly, joins the chase on horseback.