Eight years after it premiered, Netflix’s Maniac still holds up as one of the stranger things the service put out in 2018. The ten-episode limited series comes from creator Patrick Somerville and director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Emma Stone plays Annie Landsberg. Jonah Hill plays Owen Milgrim. Both sign on to a pharmaceutical trial run by Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech, promised a cure for everything that troubles them, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever. The show’s own synopsis adds the operative clause: things do not go as planned.
That is the engine of Maniac, and it is a sturdy one. The series premiered on Netflix on September 21, 2018, after being announced in 2016, and it runs ten episodes. It is a psychological black comedy drama, set in a retro-future New York City, and it is based very loosely on a 2015 Norwegian series of the same name. Maniac is not a remake in any useful sense. It takes the premise of a drug trial and builds something stranger on top of it.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim
The two leads are strangers when the trial begins, and the show’s structure depends on keeping them that way for as long as it can. Annie and Owen connect during what the source calls a risky, psychologically intense, twelve-person, mind-bending pharmaceutical trial. Twelve subjects. One study. Two people who find each other inside it.
The trial is conducted by Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech. It is originally overseen by Dr. Robert Muramoto and Dr. Azumi Fujita, played by Sonoya Mizuno. It later falls under the purview of the study’s original designer, the eccentric Dr. James K. Mantleray, played by Justin Theroux. Sally Field appears as Dr. Greta Mantleray. Gabriel Byrne is also among the series stars.
A trial with one overseer is a controlled experiment. A trial that changes hands mid-stream is something else, and Maniac leans into that instability rather than hiding it.
Inside the Neberdine Trial
The premise is a promise, and the promise is the joke. A trial that guarantees no complications and no side-effects, that will solve all of a person’s problems permanently, is not a medical proposition. It is a sales pitch, and the show treats it like one.
What the trial actually delivers is an odyssey. Annie and Owen go on a mind-bending journey through various hallucinatory worlds, and those worlds are where the series spends its budget and its imagination. The retro-future New York setting frames all of it, a version of the city that is recognizably ours and not ours at the same time.
The mechanics are simple enough to state and hard to execute. Two people enter a drug trial. The drug trial produces realities. The show has to make each of those realities worth the trip.
Emma Stone and Jonah Hill
Stone and Hill are the reason Maniac works as well as it does, and the critical reception bears that out. Reviews on release were positive, with many praising the visuals, the direction, and the acting, particularly the performances of Stone and Hill.
That praise is earned. Stone and Hill are both playing people who are, in different ways, stuck, and the show asks them to be funny and sad in the same scenes without ever letting either register dominate. The hallucinatory worlds give them room to play variations on Annie and Owen, and the series uses that room well.
The supporting cast is deep. Theroux’s Dr. James K. Mantleray is the eccentric at the center of the study’s second act. Mizuno’s Dr. Azumi Fujita is the one who was there first. Field’s Dr. Greta Mantleray rounds out the family at the heart of the trial’s design.
Casting came together over more than a year. Stone and Hill were reported to be finalizing deals alongside the initial series announcement. In August 2017, Mizuno was announced as a series regular, with Theroux and Julia Garner set to appear in a recurring capacity. On September 13, 2017, Jemima Kirke was reported in a recurring role. On October 5, 2017, Sally Field joined. On February 23, 2018, Billy Magnussen was reported as cast.
Building the Retro-Future New York
Fukunaga directed the series, and the direction is one of the things critics singled out. Maniac is a show with a look, and the look is deliberate: a New York that never quite existed, built from mid-century design and modern anxiety.
The series draws inspiration from many more famous films, according to the source, and that borrowing is visible in the way the hallucinatory worlds are staged. Each one is a genre exercise. Each one is also a way of getting at something Annie or Owen cannot say directly.
This is where Maniac is most itself and also most at risk. A show that jumps between worlds can become a show about jumping between worlds. In this paper’s view, Maniac mostly avoids that trap because the worlds are tied to the two people moving through them.
Two strangers are drawn to a mysterious pharmaceutical trial that will, they’re assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently. Things do not go as planned.
That synopsis is the whole show in three sentences, and the show knows it. The pleasure is not in the twist. The pleasure is in watching Stone and Hill navigate a premise that is designed to break them.
Where the Awards Landed
The series received multiple accolades. Stone’s performance drew nominations at the 23rd Satellite Awards and the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards. The series’s overall writing was nominated at the 71st Writers Guild of America Awards.
Those are the right categories for this show. Maniac is not a visual-effects showcase that happens to have actors in it. It is a writing and performance vehicle that happens to look extraordinary.
The recognition is also a fair measure of what Maniac is. It is not a breakout phenomenon. It is a well-made, well-acted, well-written limited series.
- Emma Stone as Annie Landsberg
- Jonah Hill as Owen Milgrim
- Sonoya Mizuno as Dr. Azumi Fujita
- Justin Theroux as Dr. James K. Mantleray
- Sally Field as Dr. Greta Mantleray
- Gabriel Byrne
What Maniac Gets Right
In this paper’s reading, the show’s central insight is that a cure is a story someone tells you. Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech sells Annie and Owen a permanent solution, and the series spends ten episodes showing what that promise costs.
The twelve-person trial is, to our mind, the right scale. It is small enough that the study feels like a room and large enough that the subjects can disappear into it. The shift from Muramoto and Fujita to Dr. James K. Mantleray gives the back half a different texture, and that change is worth watching on its own.
The hallucinatory worlds are the show’s best argument for itself. They are not detours. They are the mechanism by which two strangers learn what the other one is carrying.
Maniac is also, at ten episodes, exactly as long as it needs to be. It does not overstay.
The Verdict on Maniac
Maniac is a good show that knows what it is. It takes a premise built for a punchline, a pharmaceutical trial that promises no side-effects, and treats it with real seriousness without losing the comedy. Stone and Hill carry it. Fukunaga’s direction gives it a look. Somerville’s writing keeps it from becoming a mood board.
The weaknesses are the weaknesses of the form. A series built on hallucinatory worlds has to keep topping itself, and not every world lands as hard as the best ones. The retro-future New York is a strong frame, but in our view the show’s real interest is in the two people inside it.
What matters is that Maniac commits. It does not hedge on the trial, the promise, or the cost. It gives Annie and Owen a full arc and ends it. The critical reception was positive, and the performances are the reason.
This is a limited series worth the ten episodes. Ambition with this much craft behind it is rare enough to note.
7.6 of 10, per Metacritic’s 76/100.
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