Maniac is not cyberpunk. It is a ten-episode miniseries you can find on Netflix, and I need to tell you about it before anything else: it is one of the strangest things I have watched in years.
I suspected it in the first minutes and confirmed it later: the series became famous the way everything strange becomes famous now, because strange has been mainstream for a long time. Maniac has several kinds of weirdness, some already prototypical and some more personal, the kind that might connect with you.
The story is four completely different characters with severe mental problems, put together in an experiment. Do not expect a conventional science fiction series, although it is one. It works like a long film that never repeats a formula, so you cannot get comfortable. Every episode has a different length: some are 45 minutes, some are 23. None lasts the same.
It caught me through Jonah Hill, who plays the weird guy, extremely weird, and I recognised myself almost immediately. I am not easy to make laugh and I do not enjoy being mocked, and yet there is a moment when a character dies and I could not believe it. The humour is surreal and it is part of the story, a story full of details that are hard to catch because it is dense in nuance, in spite of how cheap it sometimes looks. At points it feels like reading an unfinished Philip K. Dick script with two large drinks and one of his jokes.
There are elves, sadistic mobsters, guns, spies and mental illness. There is a selection process and a small group locked in a claustrophobic, futuristic set. A depressed computer and a man in love with his own creation, an expert in virtual worlds and artificial intelligence. If you liked Brin’s black tears, you will like Maniac. There are even a couple of cyberpunk scenes. But Maniac is simply a funny and intelligent science fiction series. Do you know many?
If you are having a bad week, if you are tired of watching the same thing and you need something that surprises you, save Maniac for that moment. Whatever you have read, you will find your own interpretation. That is exactly what it is about.
Keep reading: Black Mirror, Altered Carbon and what cyberpunk actually means.
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