Much of Stephen Belber’s work has explored the flow of power. Who thinks they are in control vs. who actually is not only animated his breakout play and eventual Richard Linklater-directed film “Tape,” but also his underseen (other) three-hander “Match.“ In both of those films, shifting allegiances and control played out in micro, in single rooms, as characters grappled with questions surrounding sexual assault and paternity, respectively.
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Belber returns to these themes and adapts them to a much larger scale in his Netflix mini-series “The Madness,” a twisty exploration of disinformation wrapped in the guise of a thriller. It’s one of the most compelling and watchable shows Netflix has released in recent memory and, also, a showcase for Colman Domingo, an actor whose recent taste in projects has demonstrated his versatility. 
Ostensibly, the show is about the murder of a white supremacist, codenamed Brother14 (Tahmoh Penikett). While out in the Poconos working on his book, Domingo’s Muncie Daniels stumbles upon the dismembered body of his neighbor and the two hitmen responsible. A race through the woods and another murder in self-defense sets up the rest of the narrative, which plays out, at first, as an innocent man trying to solve the crime before moving into a conspiracy thriller. It’s a bit like “The Night Agent,” with more on its mind about how institutions corrupt no matter their intentions. 
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The problem is that Brother14’s body disappears, leaving the cops to wonder if there even was a murder, and that Muncie, a part-time CNN consultant on the verge of booking his own show on the network, has been outspoken about his ties to Black Lives Matter, among other causes. He’s labeled as a radical activist, and the murder of a white supremacist seems like too good a story for the media, CNN included, to not report on. 
From there, the narrative spins out in multiple directions, taking on Muncie’s estrangement from his wife (Marsha Stephanie Black) and son Demetrius (Thadeus J. Mixson), as well as his father’s own history of radicalism, which led him to murder a white landlord who was redlining when Muncie was a child. He also becomes entwined with Brother14’s ex-wife Lucie (Tamsin Topolski), a woman who’s escaped from the Forge — the white supremacist group that her husband ran — and is trying to repent for her actions while married to him. 
To reveal more is, honestly, to give up the truest pleasure of Belber’s show, although John Ortiz and Bradley Whitford give supporting performances in roles best left unspoiled. It moves like a bullet. When I reached the end of its first episode, I felt as if I’d watched an entire season crammed into an hour. In an era where most shows feel like prologues to already formed IP (“House of the Dragon” or “Dune: Prophecy” comes to mind), “The Madness” rips through the plot at an alarming pace. It’s frantic and head-spinning and more than a little bit preposterous in the best way. 
Across eight episodes, Muncie dives further into the Forge’s connections to politics and power while also troubling his idea of who holds power and, more importantly, if the end result justifies the means. If the show somewhat runs out of steam near the end, as it turns towards frank exposition to make its point about the larger issues surrounding disinformation, fake news, and, ultimately, the ways in which the 24-hour news cycle has flattened any type of nuanced discourse, it’s nevertheless a resonant point in frustrating packaging.
For a show that always feels ready to jump to the next scene, character, or event, Belber and his co-writers instead choose a straight-to-camera monologue to lay out their themes in starkly simplistic terms. When the media capitalizes and monetizes our anger and distrust, how does one escape from it?. The answer that “The Madness” arrives is a fascinating Rorschach test, and I wonder if this show would’ve been received differently if our most recent election had gone the other way.
Yet, while the show is imperfect in how it trojan horses those ideas into its conspiracy thriller packaging, “The Madness” is still one of the most purely entertaining series that I’ve seen this year and a testament to Domingo’s star power. [A-]
“The Madness” premieres November 28 on Netflix.