Emma Stone and Jonah Hill are set to star in Netflix’s new series, Maniac, and it’s right up there with the best of the streaming giants original series because it’s entirely something else.
Set in a world somewhat like our world, in a time quite similar to our time, Maniac tells the stories of Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill), two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial, each for their own reasons. Annie’s disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and her sister; Owen, the fifth son of wealthy New York industrialists, has struggled his whole life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Neither of their lives have turned out quite right, and the promise of a new, radical kind of pharmaceutical treatment—a sequence of pills its inventor, Dr. James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux), claims can repair anything about the mind, be it mental illness or heartbreak—draws them and ten other strangers to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug 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.
Directed by Cary Fukunaga, best known for True Detective, and written by novelist Patrick Somerville, the show is set in a retro-futurist world. “We decided that somewhere in the 1980s the timeline splits between our world and the real world,” says Fukunaga. The series is based on a Norwegian television series of the same name, but very loosely as Fukunaga insists. “There is nothing from the Norwegian version, I think, in our show, other than the idea that there’s delusions, and the themes of loneliness and connection.”
We were lucky enough to preview all ten episodes of the limited series, and it’s definitely got quite a lot going on. But that being said, we weren’t expecting to feel the way we did at the end. Maniac is set in what seems like a futuristic Japanese-inspired 1980’s with its sets, costuming, and props, such as plenty of neon and street sanitising robots. Surprisingly, it dabbles in both humour and seriousness, which isn’t something you’d expect when you see Jonah Hill as part of the cast. Personally, I haven’t seen many films with Jonah Hill in it, and the ones I have, I haven’t really enjoyed. However, I did not expect to enjoy Hill’s performance as much as I did, and both Hill and Emma Stone truly shine in the series.
Perhaps what made the series so intriguing, along with their characters, was that they were ever-changing. Within the three-part drug trial, the second and third components shifts the series and characters into different genres from fantasy to noir. This makes for some epic scenes since these are illusions to help them understand and deal with their lives and issues. At one point during the series, Hill plays a bit of a thug, while Stone dons some elf ears to embark on a quest. Together, they also play Long Island high school sweethearts and a pair of 1940’s grifters.
If you’re worried that the series will treat mental illness poorly, especially in light of some recent portrayals of various topics on Netflix Originals, we can assure you it doesn’t. Both Somerville and Fukunaga agreed it should never be the butt of the joke, no matter that it’s so intrinsic to the plot.
“Compassion for mental illness, and representation of mental illness, was one of the first things we talked about,” says Somerville. “Doing it in a way that honoured the subtler tragedies and difficulties of grinding through the ‘normal’ world, and the idea of a disputed diagnosis, and how murky and blurry that can be for people. I was interested in trying to tell a story about how people’s paths through life get changed if they’re labelled as someone without a working mind.”
Anything else you should be aware of before spending the next eight or so hours bingeing the series? The series does start off rather slow and it’s not until they enter Neberdine the series really does become quite interesting. The first episode mostly follows Hill’s character right up until he meets Stone’s at Neberdine, and the following episode will jump back to show Stone’s character getting to Neberdine. We also highly recommend to pay attention the length of the episode you are watching as the majority are around the 40-50 minute mark, while a few are only 23-28 minutes long and the ending of those episodes are quite jarring with it ending so quickly.
Oh yes, Justin Theroux‘s character is introduced to us with a ‘Sucktube’ attached to lower appendages and a virtual reality headset giving him, uh, maximum visuals. Other highlights? A little dance scene with Hill and Stone, Sally Field’s character(s), facing and accepting one’s reality, and that’s just to name a few.
Starring Emma Stone (La La Land), Jonah Hill (21 Jump Street), Justin Theroux (The Girl On The Train), Sally Field (Brothers and Sisters), Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina), Billy Magnussen (Get Shorty), and Julia Garner (Ozark). Maniac is created by Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers), and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective).
The ten-episode limited series hits Netflix internationally on September 21st.
