• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

And now for something completely different: A four-part Netflix dramatization of the political rise and untimely death of James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States.

The show, titled “Death by Lightning,” is a fanciful tale of Garfield, the unlikely Republican nominee for president in 1880, and Charles Giteau, the man who would eventually assassinate him. 

Their stories, starting in 1880, are told in parallel until they cross paths with tragic consequences in July 1881. 

These are not spoilers, folks. It is history, and knowing this history in advance should not prevent anyone from watching this intriguing, entertaining series.

The series plays like fiction, but it is adapted from a non-fiction book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, published in 2011.

“This is a true story about two men the world forgot,” says some words posted onscreen at the outset of Episode One of “Death by Lightning,” which started streaming this week. 

“One was the 20th president of the United States,” say the words. “The other shot him.”

This is a great drama series anchored by the two performances at the heart of its story -- Michael Shannon as Garfield (above photo, left) and Matthew Macfadyen of “Succession” as the mentally unstable Guiteau.

In the show, Garfield is an obscure farmer-congressman from Ohio who is invited to the 1880 Republican Convention in Chicago to make a nomination speech for presidential candidate John Sherman, senator from Ohio (younger brother of Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman).

Once there, the unassuming Garfield makes a speech that electrifies the convention and he ends up with the nomination, although he had no intention to do so.

At the same time, Giteau is a ne’er-do-well with a grandiosity complex who deludes himself into thinking he can become rich and successful as an inventor, businessman or even a politician. In the meantime, he sponges off his sister, played by the always-great Paula Malcomson.

“Death by Lightning” captures life in the 1880s with only a few gaffes. One of them is trivial. 

When characters are seen riding in trains, the journey is as smooth as a Japanese bullet train, and not the rocking, swaying, ear-splitting, smoke-filled experience it actually was.

But by all appearances, the series gets the politics right. It was an age of beards, and plenty of them are on display, particularly in the riveting and suspenseful nominating convention in Chicago.

Among the bewhiskered are Maine Sen. James Blain (Bradley Whitford), Vice President-to-be Chester Arthur (Nick Offerman) and New York Sen. Roscoe Conkling, political-machine boss played by Shea Whigham, whose very name seems to have sprung from the 19th century.

Also in the cast is Vondie Curtis-Hall as Frederick Douglass, seen in the above photo meeting President Garfield.

Despite the presence of these 19th-century all-stars (most as forgotten as Garfield and Giteau), “Death by Lightning” is not some sort of historical documentary. It might not be educational, but it is highly entertaining.