Network: Netflix
Series Premiere: September 21, 2018
Superbad stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill reunite in a Netflix Original miniseries about two troubled individuals who find themselves in the late stages of a strange and unpredictable pharmaceutical trial. Cary Fukanaga established himself as a talent to watch with his stunning direction for 2014’s first season of True Detective. From the glimpses we’ve seen of Maniac, however, it appears that the visual flair he demonstrated with the time-bending police procedural was just a taste of what’s to come in his career. Stone and Hill join an ensemble cast of patients and experimental scientists, the former a young woman with an obsession with her broken relationships with her mother and sister, the latter the son of a wealthy New York family with a disputed case of schizophrenia. They endure rigorous testing, hallucinogenic dreamstates and fantastical alternate realities during their trials of a new drug that is said to be a cure for any problems with mind may have. Lead by its inventor, Dr James K Mantleray (Justin Theroux), the experiments threaten to drive the two apart but, somehow, they always find themselves coming back together again.