Colman Domingo is charged with the murder of a neo-Nazi

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: NetflixThe latest thriller would have benefited from being half as long, but it still remains a moderately compelling rollercoaster ride thanks to the lead actor’s outstanding performance.

Colman Domingo is this A-lister, and his appeal is the glue that holds Stephen Belber’s together The madnessPremiering November 28, its tantalizing twists and turns are undermined by a significant amount of filler and much talk of race, disinformation and injustice, which turns out to be merely superficial embellishments of its central plot. One can well imagine that the limited series would also work well as a feature film. However, at nearly eight hours, it’s another insanely bloated modern streaming endeavor.

The madness is a classic “wrong man” affair about Muncie Daniels (Domingo), a broadcast journalist on the verge of finally getting his own man CNN show. However, when he is doing well professionally, his personal life is a mess. Muncie is estranged from his wife Elena (Marsha Stephanie Blake), who wants him to pursue a divorce he doesn’t want, as well as his relationships with his teenage son Demetrius (Thaddeus J. Mixson) and older daughter Kallie (Gabrielle Graham) are alienated shaky.

With several things on his mind, including recurring claims (most recently from a television guest) that he has turned his back on his community to advance his career, Muncie sets off alone to a rented Poconos cabin where he settles down to start writing a book.

As a breakneck prologue reveals, Muncie’s mountain excursion proves decidedly unpleasant. When his power goes out, he makes his way to the neighboring house, whose resident Mark Simon (Tahmoh Penikett) had previously invited him to come over if he needed anything. What Muncie finds in the mansion’s sauna is Mark’s dismembered body and two vicious masked gunmen intent on covering up their crime.

A chase through the woods ends with Muncie successfully stabbing one of his attackers with a pen and then passing out in the woods, regardless of the fact that there is another potential killer roaming the area. Muncie’s sleep is reportedly a byproduct of his exhaustion and stress. Still, it’s pretty absurd, not just because it puts his life in danger, but because it allows his attacker to spend the rest of the day and night cleaning up his murderous mess and hatching a plan to pin it all on the TV star .

Muncie quickly comes to the conclusion that he is framed for the murder of Mark, a leading neo-Nazi influencer known online by the alias Brother14. As a black man with a history of activism — and a father who went to prison for murdering a racist landlord — Muncie is an ideal scapegoat.

Although he informs the police about what really happened at the cabin, including the discovery that someone had placed a tracking device on his car, he immediately becomes the prime suspect in Simon’s disappearance and, once the victim’s body parts are found in Muncie’s apartment building, for his murder. Therefore, he is forced to go on the run, although he tries to work with FBI agent Franco Quinones (John Ortiz), who believes that Muncie’s dilemma is somehow related to his own investigation (the nature of which he does not want to reveal). and who occasionally offers him help that does not significantly improve his circumstances.

Domingo is simultaneously imposing and exhausted, confident and unnerved, and has a commanding presence throughout The madnessand he’s at his best when the material creatively imprisons Muncie and turns potential escape routes into dead ends. But to flesh out eight hour-long episodes, Belber burdens him with a series of problems—namely, the desire to go on self-serving solo missions and run away when the going gets tough—that come across as unnecessary window dressing.

The same can be said about the racial bias of the proceedings. While Mark’s white nationalist ties, his wife Lucie’s (Tamsin Topolski) ongoing relationship with that world, and constant verbal asides about the persecution of black people and corrupt police officers routinely bring the issue to the fore, the series takes pains to foreground both . Furthermore, it eventually becomes clear that Muncie’s predicament actually has nothing to do with intolerance and everything to do with greed and power.

The madness deals with hot topics without having the courage to say anything bold about it. Luckily, it’s adept at supporting its protagonist into dangerous turns. The murder of one YouTube The journalist who worked with Mark suspects that the people behind Muncie are gambling for money, and his investigation soon leads him to believe that they are a billionaire (Bradley Whitford) and is supported to varying degrees by his lawyer friend Kwesi (Deon Cole) and surrogate father figure Isiah (Stephen McKinley Henderson).

In an increasingly dire situation, Muncie takes drastic measures to protect himself and his loved ones, who inevitably become targets of the nefarious forces that want to silence him before he can ruin their operation – which deflationarily involves election interference, climate change, and a generic brand of corporate malevolence.

Belber’s story is ostensibly about caustic disinformation and personal responsibility, but these concerns seem like decoration. The madness is at its safest when it embraces its Hitchcockian roots and tests Muncie, and Colman’s charismatic and nuanced performance helps it overcome a handful of developments that strain credibility.

Directors Clement Virgo, Jessica Lowrey and Quyen Tran use clever framing to suggest the hero’s cramped situation, be it the image of him peeking through the bars of a fire escape or compositions that visually push him to the edges of the screen push and/or restrict. The formal elegance of the series reinforces its tension. So it’s frustrating that Muncie’s saga often feels dark, both literally and figuratively, casting everything in a gloomy, gloomy light that offsets its otherwise impressive panache.

Although it revolves around peripheral characters who never develop beyond two-dimensional types, The madness is paranoid and fearful enough to keep the intrigue going until the end (if not the coda). Ultimately, it’s eerily similar to its many star-driven small-screen brethren – overlong and uneven, if still reasonably compelling thanks to its accomplished headliner.