By Can humanity evolve to the point it no longer experiences pain? This is the question at the dark heart of Netflix’s new mind-bending show, Maniac. The 10 episode drama starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill is the latest venture from Cary Fukunaga - he of the revered first season of True Detective and 2015's Beasts of No Nation - and is loosely based on a Norwegian TV series.
Maniac drops us in a just-about recognisable New York, but in this hyper capitalist alternate reality there is a Statue of Extra Liberty and neon advertising for an Icelandic fish company covers the Queensboro Bridge. In it we meet Owen Milgrim (Hill) and Annie Landsberg (Stone), two people weighed down by past traumas and at an impasse in their lives who agree to take part in a pharmaceutical trial which aims to “eradicate all unnecessary and insufficient forms of human pain forever.”
Over the course of three days and three pills, the pair are subjected to a series of “reflections” which are somewhere between dreams and reality. In these wild visions they are forced to relive the worst day of their lives, firstly as themselves and then disguised in stories involving unrecognisable characters and places.
Naturally the trial goes wrong, with the computer running the experiment developing feelings and working independently of its designer Dr. James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux) and his Machiavellian chain-smoking colleague, Dr. Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno).
The result is a series of mad and muddled fever dreams in which Stone and Hill embody a range of characters, including a married couple from middle America trying rescue a lemur from a fur shop and two acquaintances locating a lost chapter of Don Quixote at a séance in the woods.
But instead of this feeling like starting over each time, Stone and Hill - who really cements his 'proper actor' credentials here - cleverly sew a thread of the original Owen and Annie into each new character they embody. Even when Stone is playing an elf stalking the mountains somewhere between Westeros and Rivendell, we still see some of Annie in her waiting to be bought back to the surface in the neon testing lab.
The script, co-written with creator and producer Patrick Somerville, provides some laugh out loud moments which catch you off-guard. “I’m not fucking crazy Patricia I’m just goal-oriented,” Annie says after threatening a child’s life.
The supporting cast are superb with Theroux battling with career anxiety and mother issues providing endless entertainment, and Sally Field stealing the show as his gloriously repellent mother.
Maniac is Fukunaga’s second venture with the streaming service after the well received Idris Elba-led Beasts of No Nation. One issue Maniac may come up against is whether it is addictive enough for streaming viewers to keep putting on the next episode, or if they feel too disparate for a 'binge'.
But viewer dedication is definitely rewarded. While Maniac’s eccentricities can be a little disorientating, even if you lose your footing there is always something beautiful and strange to marvel at.
Fukunaga did his own cinematography in Beasts of No Nation where he captured the emerald and sand landscape of Ghana. While he hasn't done the same here, you can see his obsession with visuals everywhere from the lingering shots of a greying Chinatown to the laboratory bathed in a series of neon lights.
The shifts in tone are also enjoyable, as Maniac goes from a dark sci-fi story to a compelling drama to a black comedy in just a few scenes. Watching it you sense that feeling unsettled is exactly where Fukunaga wants you to be.
And as with all the best science fiction, moments when the dystopian elements hold up a mirror to our own reality are when the show is at its most powerful. Whether it is a Friend Proxy Service where the cash-strapped offer their services to the lonely or Ad Buddy, where a droning human reads adverts to you in exchange for paying for your subway ticket, these inventions aren’t wildly unimaginable from present day and have a definite Black Mirror quality to them.
The science fiction trimmings of Owen and Annie’s New York are, nevertheless, done with restraint, in service to the human relationships in these strange worlds. Annie finding resolution with her sister provides a moving storyline amongst mad sights like a purple koala playing chess. Would we remove painful memories if science offered us a few pills to do so? Fukunaga leaves the question of whether the pills have worked unanswered and instead we see two people connecting as the cure to their pain. It's a hopeful ending in a series which is not of this world and yet feels deeply human.
'Maniac' is on Netflix now
