The Residence Review

The Residence arrives with an intriguing premise, a lush setting, and a stacked cast, but the locked-room mystery ultimately finds itself tangled up in its own ambition. Set within the hallowed halls of the White House, the latest offering from Netflix’s partnership with executive producer Shonda Rhimes positions itself as an offbeat whodunnit in the vein of Knives Out or Poker Face. But it struggles to carve out a distinct identity in a genre that’s feeling a bit overdone of late.

Credit to creator Paul William Davies for looking beyond the case files of Hercule Poirot and Lieutenant Columbo for inspiration: The Residence drops its unconventional gumshoe, Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba), into an extremely loose adaptation of a nonfiction book about the White House and the people who keep it running. He’s taken a historical framework and spun it into something playfully subversive, but the result is a series that aims for sharp and propulsive, but lacks the followthrough to pull it off.

Aduba commands the proceedings with absolute ease, even if she’s playing a detective whose eccentricities may as well be cobbled together from the “memorable TV sleuth” breakout kit. (She’s an obsessive ornithology enthusiast in her spare time, for one). In the aftermath of a mysterious death during a state dinner for Australia, Cupp and the Watson to her Holmes (FBI Special Agent Edwin Park, played by Ranall Park) sift through a cavalcade of potential perps, including a disgruntled pastry chef (Bronson Pinchot), the president’s slovenly brother (Jason Lee), a shifty presidential advisor (Ken Marino) and the White House’s flighty social secretary (Molly Griggs). Oh, and Kylie Minogue. Yes, that Kylie Minogue – she of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and the very ’80s cover of “The Loco-Motion.” No one is above suspicion.

On paper, the mystery of who killed persnickety White House Chief Usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) is exactly the kind of twisty, Agatha Christie-inflected setup that should make for crackerjack TV. But The Residence keeps getting in its own way. The pacing of the episodes (all hovering around an hour) is oddly languid, its web of suspects and subplots often convoluted for convolution’s sake as it cuts between the night of the murder and the days and hours leading up to it. All that back-and-forth ultimately dampens any impact the solution may have had: The show’s multiple timelines – including a congressional inquiry taking place several months after the crime – muddy the waters rather than adding to the intrigue.

That’s not to say The Residence is without its charms. The production design is lavish, the dialogue has the signature snap of past Rhimes productions like Bridgerton and Scandal, and Aduba is effortlessly watchable in a role that seems tailor-made for her. Some of the season’s best moments are when Cupp sets her steely gaze on one of her suspects – or as she prefers to call them, interviewees. Before long, they spill their guts all on their own.

There are some welcome moments of biting social commentary nestled among The Residence’s clues and red herrings. But by the time the eight-episode run (with super-sized finale) wrapped, I was left wondering if it would’ve been better off playing things straight – a prestige drama about the unseen workers of the White House, rather than a murder mystery mapped onto a behind-the-scenes bestseller. There’s definitely some fun to be had, but in the increasingly crowded field of quirky detective fare, The Residence never fully earns its seat at the state dinner.