Mani­ac review: Mes­meris­ing char­ac­ter work in a retro­fu­tur­is­tic setting

At times it is hard to dis­tin­guish whether a big flashy show that relies on mind-bog­gling sto­ry lines and sheer weird­ness is mys­te­ri­ous and puz­zling for the pure sake of being puz­zling, or whether there real­ly is a pro­found mes­sage beneath con­vo­lut­ed episodes and unsolved rid­dles. Our cur­rent age of TV fan­dom has bred a new gen­er­a­tion of fanat­ics eager to chase answers to ques­tions that may or may not have been posed, as it offers them a form of escapism from a soci­ety that can no longer be explained.

Based on the first three episodes of Cary Fukunaga’s lat­est Net­flix ven­ture, Mani­ac, it would have been easy to assume that it falls into the cat­e­go­ry of shows that gets lost in its own con­fu­sion. Once you push past the story’s set-up, how­ev­er, Mani­ac opens its audi­ence up to a mul­ti-lay­ered view­ing expe­ri­ence that skips back and forth between gen­res – from pure sci-fi to dra­ma to black com­e­dy and fan­ta­sy – with­out los­ing track of what tru­ly dri­ves this man­ic sto­ry­line: its characters.

The show fol­lows Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jon­ah Hill), two strangers des­per­ate­ly try­ing to come to terms with past trau­mas that have left them both in vul­ner­a­ble men­tal states. Ini­tial­ly, Fuku­na­ga and writer Patrick Som­merville allow us to explore the perime­ters of the pro­tag­o­nists’ respec­tive head­spaces, with­out over­load­ing us with the infor­ma­tion they are fever­ish­ly seek­ing. What’s up with the pur­ple koala play­ing chess in a seem­ing­ly nor­mal New York park? And did the pecu­liar, inex­plic­a­bly cute dog-poop-eat­ing machine acci­den­tal­ly eat the chi­huahua Annie is search­ing for? Are Owen’s ​“pop­corn prob­lems” real or a fig­ment of his imag­i­na­tion? So many ques­tions. And they don’t all need answers.

Much like War­ren Ellis did in his cult com­ic, ​‘Trans­met­ro­pol­i­tan’, Fuku­na­ga throws his audi­ence into a world that is a cul­ture shock in and of itself. Neon bill­boards adver­tis­ing ambigu­ous com­pa­nies make up the city’s sky­line, robots in all shapes and sizes – and, per­haps, even koala form – house the con­scious­ness of humans who no longer want to par­tic­i­pate in this soci­ety, and a ques­tion­able phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny seems stuck in the past, with its staff sport­ing hair­styles and fash­ion we haven’t seen since the ear­ly eight­ies. It is at this com­pa­ny, Neber­dine Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and Biotech, that Annie and Owen meet for the first time.

Annie and Owen have signed up for a three-day drug tri­al, the results of which are meant to per­ma­nent­ly erad­i­cate any form of men­tal ill­ness and heartache expe­ri­enced by the test sub­jects. The tri­al con­sists of three pills – A, B and C – that lead par­tic­i­pants through three piv­otal stages in a dream­like state.

Owen, who suf­fers from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia, is con­vinced that Annie was sent to him by a broth­er he’s not sure exists and that, togeth­er, they are meant to uncov­er the pat­tern of the uni­verse. Annie, on the oth­er hand, has been using pill A to relive the expe­ri­ence of her sister’s trau­mat­ic death over and over again, addict­ed to the momen­tary illu­sion of being in her pres­ence. Deter­mined to take it to the next step, she manip­u­lates a Neber­dine recep­tion­ist through the ​“Bud­dy Ser­vice” – a mod­ern day lone­ly hearts set up – to gain approval for the trial.

The tri­al is led by the neu­rot­ic Dr James Mantler­ay (Justin Ther­oux) and his chain-smok­ing assis­tant, Dr Fuji­ta (Sonoya Mizuno). Hav­ing designed the mas­sive com­put­er that reads and analy­ses the data pro­vid­ed by the sub­jects’ brain­waves, and that is based on the con­scious­ness of his own moth­er, renowned pop cul­ture psy­chol­o­gist Dr Gre­ta (Sal­ly Field), he feels even more pres­sure for the tri­al to suc­ceed. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the com­put­er sys­tem now has its own emo­tion­al issues to work through and, giv­en the nature of James’ com­plex rela­tion­ship to Gre­ta, the com­put­er goes on revenge mode halfway through the final stages of the trial.

Explor­ing Black Mir­ror-esque real­i­ties and unique retro-futur­is­tic visu­als through the eyes of its main char­ac­ters, Mani­ac man­ages to suc­ceed where oth­er shows fail mis­er­ably – find­ing the right bal­ance between humour, dra­ma and the absur­di­ty of dreams. Stone and Hill shine in their roles, but the char­ac­ters that ulti­mate­ly set the tone of the series are Dr James Mantler­ay and Dr Fuji­ta. Ther­oux, who thrives in mys­te­ri­ous set­tings such as those posed in HBO’s The Left­overs, brings his toupee-wear­ing, para­phil­i­ac doc­tor with severe mom­my issues to life with the type of crip­pling anx­i­ety and man-child body lan­guage that is as unset­tling as it is com­i­cal. Paired with Sonoya’s calm but equal­ly eccen­tric Dr Fuji­ta, they make for a night­mar­ish dream team, one we hope to see a lot more of in the future.