Off Kilter

Mind games on “Maniac” and “Dietland.”

- Emily Nussbaum

During the first episode of “Maniac,” on Netflix, a Russian tour guide steers some red-baseball-capped tourists past a monument in New York Harbor: a flashy gold “Statue of Extra Liberty,” her wings spread wide, wielding a sword. It’s a throwaway visual gag, never revisited, but it made me snort, suggesting as it did something brain-twisty and satirical.

It’s easy to get hopped up, at first, on the look and feel of “Maniac,” an archly dystopic series about two unhappy people, Owen and Annie, who volunteer for an experimental drug trial. The show has its own vibe of Extra Liberty, of dreamy aesthetic excess, with popcorn popping on New York sidewalks and scientists moodily chain-smoking in labs. Written by the novelist Patrick Somerville, inspired by a Norwegian series, and directed by Cary Fukunaga, the show fills frames with inventive imagery, like a tiny pooper-scooper robot that follows dogs down the street, or Ad Buddy, a cash-replacement service that pairs you with a human being who tags along on the subway, shilling like an advertorial. A bit “Mr. Robot,” a bit “Black Mirror,” “Maniac” evokes an ad-drenched universe full of dicey cure-alls, sold to remedy the alienation this world creates—a place just adjacent to our own.