On July 2, 1881, a mentally ill ex-attorney named Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield, the president of the United States, as the latter was about to board a train at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. The assassin was apprehended almost immediately; one of the two shots had merely grazed Garfield’s shoulder, but the second shot, in his back, was a much more serious wound. He didn’t die immediately but instead lingered on for more than 11 weeks, wracked with infection, before finally dying of sepsis on September 19.

Garfield had served as president for only a few months, but among U.S. leaders, he was notable in many ways: an intellectually curious man who published a proof of the Pythagorean theorem; a Civil War major general and longtime U.S. congressman from Ohio who had no ambition for higher office but stepped up when his party needed him during a deadlocked convention; a president who, during his brief tenure, championed civil rights for Black Americans and fought against ingrained corruption in Washington. Candice Millard’s Kirkus-starred 2011 history, Destiny of the Republic, delves into Garfield’s life and times in engaging detail, while also providing fine portraits of his wife, his colleagues, his killer, and even Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who invented a device to help doctors find the bullet in Garfield’s body. A new limited series based on Millard’s book, Death by Lightning, stars Michael Shannon as Garfield and Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen as Guiteau. It premieres on November 6.

This miniseries adaptation, created by Bad Education’s Mike Makowsky, gets its title from an observation made by Garfield himself: “Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning, and it is best not to worry about either.” Indeed, Garfield had no bodyguards with him when he was shot—despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had been murdered by a member of the public less than two decades earlier. In a strange quirk of fate, one of the people who was with Garfield was his secretary of war—Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham’s son. The show notes this fact but does it so quickly that some viewers may well miss it—a moment of real drama, lost.

The show does accurately depict the hard-fought 1880 Republican convention—which elected Garfield as a compromise candidate when the delegates couldn’t settle on another—as a lively affair, full of flowery speeches and bitter rivalries. It also clearly shows the culture of political corruption that existed when Garfield took office. The powerful U.S. Sen. Roscoe Conkling of New York (played with gusto by Boardwalk Empire’s Shea Wigham) and his former colleague, Vice President Chester Arthur (an amusing Nick Offerman), had both built their careers on the patronage and graft that Garfield despised. The series ambitiously tackles an era of American history that generally gets short shrift in film and television, and, when dealing with the politics of that era, it largely succeeds.

Unfortunately, this adaptation goes astray in other areas. Guiteau hounded many officials in the Garfield administration in his obsession to obtain a post as Paris consul—a job for which he had no qualifications whatsoever, but to which he felt entitled, due to deep delusions of grandeur. His stalking tendencies eventually led to Garfield’s violent end. Yet the miniseries and Macfadyen’s performance treats Guiteau as a source of comedy, highlighting his profound lack of social graces rather than frankly acknowledging his mental illness. It results in a weirdly inconsistent tone—an off-putting choice for a story that is, at its heart, a tragedy.

Other figures also receive simplistic or inaccurate treatment. Conkling, for instance, is depicted solely as a mustache-twirling villain; one would never know that this flawed figure was one of the men who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Secretary of State James Blaine, an accomplished man who ran for president multiple times, barely registers as a political force; instead, Bradley Whitford plays him as an old-timey version of Josh Lyman, his character on The West Wing. The miniseries’ version of first lady Lucretia Garfield, played by the estimable Betty Gilpin, gets some powerful scenes; in one, she profanely tells off Vice President Arthur, and in another she witheringly excoriates a condemned Guiteau. These are both great scenes, to be sure—but they almost certainly never happened; they certainly don’t appear in Millard’s extremely well-researched history.

Nonetheless, Shannon is excellent as Garfield, showcasing the president’s thoughtfulness and decency but also his toughness and determination to do what’s right. His performance is so good, in fact, that viewers may feel compelled to read more about this intriguing president. Fortunately, Destiny of the Republic is a very good place to start.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.