A great locked-room murder mystery has to have some core elements. First, it requires an interesting setting, preferably one with lots of nooks and crannies that’s a little unnerving. It also needs a vast cast of suspects, all of whom are hiding something (even if it’s not relevant to the murder under investigation). A good detective, someone a little offbeat but respected (by the viewer if not the other characters) is an obnoxious must. And more than anything, it has to have the right pace.
Netflix’s latest Shondaland offering, The Residence (written and showrun by Paul William Davies), has many of those elements. Set in the White House (with 137 rooms, there are plenty of nooks and crannies), it sees Uzo Aduba’s consulting detective Cordelia Cupp called in to investigate after the murder of A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito), the Chief Usher at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And Wynter isn’t murdered on any old night. No, he’s offed during a state dinner for Australia, so there are plenty of suspects wandering around in the form of guests, White House staff, and members of the administration.
This all makes Cupp’s job more difficult, as do the many incompetent “dudes,” as Cupp refers to them, who insist on sticking their oars in: the president’s close friend and advisor Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino), Secret Service agent Colin Trask (Dan Perrault), head of the National Park Police Irv Samuelson (Andrew Friedman), and Director of the F.B.I. Wally Glick (Spencer Garrett). They’re all convinced that Wynter died by suicide, and their aim is to make sure the state dinner goes on without interruption, mostly because everything the current administration has done to this point has either been a disaster or without impact.
Cupp’s investigation is the highlight of the series, as she disregards any and all White House rules—written and unwritten—in her pursuit of the truth. Plus, Aduba is a magnetic presence onscreen, and it’s believable that her character could sit in silence and stare someone out until they start to spill all of their secrets. She makes great work of the material, even when she’s endlessly explaining various birds. (The birding makes her “quirky,” okay? More on that in a moment.)
The ensemble cast is also great, from White House chef Marvella (Mary Wiseman), whose nemesis is pastry chef Didier Gotthard (Bronson Pinchot), to social secretary Lilly Schumacher (Molly Griggs), who wants to revolutionize the White House and is accompanied on her mission by friend and podcaster St. Pierre (Taran Killam). There is plenty, then, to keep viewers guessing and entertained. But The Residence isn’t satisfied with that. It’s like the show looked at the murder-mystery genre and decided it needed to “elevate” it.
A lot of The Residence’s problems have to do with framing. Instead of all of the action taking place during or just after the night of the murder, we’re shot forward 10 months into the future to a Senate committee hearing, that well-known bastion of excitement. This committee, headed by Senator Aaron Filkins (Al Franken in a meta bit of casting), is trying to find out what happened at the White House that night and has called before it all the major players—from new Chief Usher Jasmine Haney (Susan Kelechi Watson) to Edwin Park (Randall Park), the F.B.I. agent who’s tasked with keeping Cupp company and becomes her not-that-useful but still entertaining right-hand man.
The evidence given to the committee acts as a narration of events at the White House, but it feels like wasted time. “Show, don’t tell” is a well-known maxim of storytelling—and for good reason. But The Residence ignores it, both with the Senate committee and with Cupp’s bird watching hobby. (Viewers are constantly subjected to long explanations about various birds, which are clearly meant to be metaphors for what is happening or how certain people are acting.)
The show itself sees the futility of the committee, which disappears for large swathes of episodes only to reemerge in the sixth installment with a vengeance thanks to the bee conspiracy-theory loving Senator Margery Bay Bix (Eliza Coupe) has in her bonnet about a cover-up. Given the amount of time spent away from Cupp, it’s easily the weakest episode of the show. Cutting the committee down (or even out) of the story would have made for a much brisker watch, especially given that two episodes clock in at more than an hour.
In the scenes of the committee, and in its glimpses into the current administration, The Residence seems like it aims to be a commentary on American politics. But the show can’t decide what it wants to say about that apart from maybe that it’s all ridiculous or uninspiring. It feels low stakes and shyly handled, like the show doesn’t dare lean into a political opinion.
But The Residence does lean into its jokes—to its detriment. Kylie Minogue makes an appearance as herself, but there’s just a bad lookalike for fellow Aussie Hugh Jackman. It’s clear no one watching is meant to believe that this is Jackman himself, but the bit carries on for far too long. The Residence also loves a referential joke. At one point, Cupp hears a story about a dog barking in the night, and responds, “Curious incident.” It’s the kind of reference (to Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time) that wants to be thought of as really clever, but should probably have been cut from the script’s first draft.
The Residence presents itself as part of the great legacy of murder mysteries, with each episode named after a famous or not-so-famous film and/or book, but the references rarely get sophisticated or go beyond the title. It’s perhaps a way of getting ahead of comparisons to other similar works, with the show nodding to Knives Out within its first 15 minutes (and later naming its third outing after the film). And this might just pinpoint the series’ biggest issue: It’s trying to be cleverer than its genre and more than “just” a murder mystery, as if that wouldn’t have been fun, interesting, or watchable enough. The joke—and it’s way meatier than that running Hugh Jackman one—though is that The Residence should have just stuck to the basics (and given us more Aduba).
