TV Miniseries Recommendation: Manhunt: Unabomber (2017)

*******

Manhunt: Unabomber is a TV miniseries that aired on Discovery Channel in August and September 2017.  This eight part episode explores the life of Ted Kaczynski and Jim Fitzgerald, the FBI profiler, who was one out of the 150 task force members assigned to capture the Unabomber.  The effort to identify and arrest him spanned basically 18 years from 1978 to 1996.  Once Kaczynski was arrested, it was the U.S. court system’s responsibility to make him accountable for killing three people and severely injuring 23 others.  Despite knowing the Unabomber was caught, the series still allows you to experience the failures and successes as the manhunt continued to its end.  There were a few scenes regarding Kaczynski’s childhood especially his time at Harvard that negatively influenced him, but clearly doesn’t explain all his future behavior.  Rarely one thing ever does.  He was sentenced to eight life sentences without the possibility of parole in 1998 and is currently housed in a Colorado prison known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”  While Sam Worthington played a good adversary, Paul Bettany as Ted Kaczynski was a great portrayal of a highly intelligent, mentally and emotionally conflicted person.  While Fitzgerald and Kaczynski never met during or after his capture, it led to interesting psychological jockeying between the actors portraying them.  I consider this one of the strongest parts of this miniseries.