Meanwhile, Netflix not so experimental anymore like a few years ago. Well-known brands such as The Witcher, Bridgerton and Resident Evil are being filmed as large-scale series with franchise potential, while established successful concepts return every few months in a new guise. That wasn’t always the case.
For a while, Netflix ventured into niches that the competition rarely entered. Idiosyncratic projects like The OA and Lady Dynamite transformed the streaming service into a Place of unpredictabilityOne of the best series from this era is the idiosyncratic sci-fi dramedy Maniac, starring Emma Stone.
Brilliant sci-fi series on Netflix: Maniac with Emma Stone and Jonah Hill will blow your mind
The story of Maniac takes us to a minimally dystopian New York. Here, the pharmaceutical company
Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech (NPB) caused a stir with a three-day test that was supposed to rid the participants of all their mental problems. For Annie Landsberg, played by Stone, this test comes at just the right time.
You can watch the trailer for Maniac here:
Maniac – S01 Trailer (German) HD
Annie drifts aimlessly through her life and looks at a Mountain of broken relationships She is particularly unhappy with her mother and sister. At NPB she meets Owen Milgrim, played by Jonah Hill, who comes from a wealthy family and is struggling with his own problems.
Two dissimilar people in a mysterious place: The rooms of NPB could have been taken directly from a claustrophobic mystery series like Severance and Homecoming. But soon the series sends its characters into exciting fantasy adventures and dark spy thrillers. In Maniac, nothing is as it seems.
Sci-Fi insider tip: Maniac is the perfect series for a binge marathon on Netflix
The deeper we penetrate into the NPB labyrinth, the more fascinating the series becomes. Aside from the many puzzles and secrets, Maniac thrills with a detailed retro look. Although there is something real to be discovered in the characters, the environment feels distorted, as if the world is falling apart.
The creative mind behind the project is Patrick Somerville, who also created the brilliant post-apocalyptic story Station Eleven. He is channeling thoughtful and humorous tones into the story, which is relentlessly driven by Dan Romer’s (Beasts of the Southern Wild) magnificent score.
Another bonus point for Maniac: co-creator Cary Joji Fukunaga (No Time to Die) directed the entire series. His production contains so many attentive observationsthat you can watch the series twice in a row and immediately discover new details about the course of the story.
Maniac was conceived as a miniseries and premiered on Netflix on September 21, 2018. A total of ten episodes with a running time of between 26 and 47 minutes await you. If you are having a binge marathon – and the series is definitely suitable for that – you should almost six and a half hours through his.