‘Death by Lightning’ is the historical TV drama you simply cannot miss

The most fun you’ll have on TV this fall is with the likes of James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Seriously.

Are those old-timey names ringing a little bit of a bell? Maybe a sense memory from seventh-grade U.S. history class, where you learned about the 19th-century president who was assassinated who wasn’t Abraham Lincoln? Maybe you remember black-and-white photos of men with big beards and bigger sideburns, and some annoying guy pulling out the bit of trivia at a party that Garfield wasn’t killed by the bullet but by the infection that followed?

This isn’t a test, so if you can’t remember your presidential lore fear not, you’ll still deeply enjoy Netflix’s new historical romp “Death by Lightning” (streaming now, ★★★½ out of four). The four-episode limited series is a surprisingly fun look at the unlikely ascension of Garfield (a straight-talking Michael Shannon) to the presidency and his assassination three months later by delusional political-wannabe Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession”).

It’s a shocking and tantalizing tale that you probably didn’t learn enough about in school, but creator Mike Makowksy (“Bad Education”) is happy to adapt the story for the screen from historian Candice Millard’s 2011 book “Destiny of the Republic.” Hollywood writers throw around the phrase “stranger than fiction” far too often, but “Lightning” is the rare series that reveals the absurd and uncanny truth. With an absolute stellar cast − including Nick Offerman, Shea Whigham, Betty Gilpin and Bradley Whitford, in addition to Shannon and MacFadyen − “Lighting” is an all-gas-no-breaks political drama that reminds us that our history is weirder and more important than most of us remember.