In a nondescript modern warehouse, a medical canister containing a preserved human brain falls out of a storage box. A worker picks it up, reads its label and asks: “Who the fuck is Charles Guiteau?” So begins Death by Lightning, a biographical miniseries based on Candice Millard’s history Destiny of the Republic, about the presidency of James Garfield – and the man who shot him.

The year is 1880 and Guiteau (the inestimable Matthew Macfadyen) has been hauled from his cell in a New York City jail to answer for himself before a board of reproving judges. They say he has been “found guilty of false pretences” and evading arrest. He says: “That’s not how I recollect it.” Cut to a flashback of Guiteau indeed attempting to evade arrest. They say he previously spent time upstate, living in the Oneida free-love colony. Cut to a flashback of Guiteau standing in a field, watching a couple shagging against a wooden cart. He says they are “mistaken”. From our first introduction to Guiteau, then, we know he is an unreliable narrator of his life, a bit of a rogue.

He is released to the care of his sister, who is too ready to forgive her errant brother and too ready to believe that his next scheme might just be the one that takes off. He briefly flirts with a plan to start a newspaper, “The Daily Theocrat”, then gets swept up in politics, his fate soon to become tangled with that of the future president (ironically, given its opening gambit, the series has taken some liberties with this rather compressed backstory). Having made off with his brother-in-law’s fortune, stolen from the household safe, Guiteau parades as a far richer or more cultured man, spending recklessly on steaks and whores.

The other half of this two-hander is, of course, Garfield (Michael Shannon, an eerily good likeness), a humble senator and Civil War veteran from Ohio, who has (apparently) no aspirations to the presidency. He attends the Republican National Convention in Chicago, where the party will nominate its next presidential candidate, to speak on behalf of another senator from his home state. The speech he gives, however, is so rousing, so stirring, that he ends up winning the nomination over all of the more likely candidates, including the former president Ulysses Grant. Oops. Through the words of Garfield’s wife, Crete, Death by Lightning gently chides the idea that Garfield never wanted to be president: “You would have me believe, like some fool, that a man just falls upward toward a presidency?”

Garfield’s hastily assembled campaign team, in their search for a running mate, alight upon Chester Arthur (a gruff, mutton-chopped Nick Offerman), crucially a New York man and collector of the port. The party at the time was split between two factions: the Half-Breeds – liberal moderates who wanted to end the spoils system – and the Stalwarts, the “old guard” who wanted to keep the old ways. Garfield was of the former, Arthur the latter. Arthur is presented as opportunistic, boisterous, a bit of a brute. Shannon’s Garfield is, by contrast, an idealistic defender of civil rights, set on ending cronyism in government. He is, in a sense, not very good at politics: too principled to play the game.

A chance encounter between Guiteau and Garfield ignites Guiteau’s fickle passions. Suddenly he is set: his new life’s purpose is to help Garfield enact his total reform of the state and the country. But Guiteau’s efforts are rebuffed and rejected by the party establishment and the rest is, literally, history. Guiteau is a tragicomic figure, but the laughs at his expense come guiltily. His ambitions are so delusional, his behaviour so ridiculous – because he is, it becomes increasingly clear as the episodes go on, insane.

Death by Lightning is a competent, diligent rendering of a remarkable story unknown to many. At four episodes, it felt too brief: just as you get to grips with the politics of the age, the whole thing is over. Just one episode, for instance, is dedicated to Garfield’s brief presidency and the machinations of his rivals to block his appointments and reforms. But ultimately its flaw is that it never makes the case for why Garfield and Guiteau’s stories matter, or why they need to be told now. It may go some way to answering its opening question, but raises another: why should I care?

Death by Lightning Netflix

[Further reading: Marina Abramović will live forever]