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A Netflix viewer was furious this moment of its new 19th century drama was unnecessarily diverse – 14 A++ comebacks that all get 5-star reviews

John Plunkett. Updated November 11th, 2025

New Netflix drama Death by Lightning is by all accounts very good indeed.

Matthew Macfadyen stars as Charles Guiteau, the man who assassinated American president James Garfield (Michael Shannon), in 1881.

We mention it not just because Netflix promised us a year’s free subscription if we did (they didn’t) but because it caught the attention of one eagle-eyed viewer who wasn’t happy that this particular scene was more diverse – he said – than the history books would suggest.

And he went on about it so much you might almost think it was an obsession.

‘I was watching Netflix’s new series Death by Lightning. It’s set in Chicago, 1880 – and this establishing scene pops up.

‘In the foreground:

– an Asian woman,
– two Black men,
– and a one-legged man – all walking together downtown.

‘It immediately stuck out to me, so I looked up the actual demographics for Chicago in 1880.

‘Here’s what the numbers say:

– Chicago’s population: about 503,000
– Black population: 6,500 (≈1.3%)
– Chinese population: 172 total (≈0.03%)
– Chinese women? About 3% of that – meaning roughly 5 total in the entire city.
– Disabled/one-legged men from the Civil War era? Plausible, maybe 0.1–0.2% of the population.

‘So if you ran the math on the odds of seeing all of that – an Asian woman, two Black men, and an amputee – in one random 50-person crowd downtown, it comes out to about 0.00016%, or roughly 1 in 640,000.

‘In other words, Netflix made a scene that’s about as statistically likely as spotting a UFO on your morning commute – but hey, at least the diversity box got checked.’

And he wasn’t finished there.

And we’re glad he went to all that trouble – in a way – because it prompted no end of supremely satisfying responses.

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