Uzo Aduba in Netflix’s Mystery Comedy

When Jennifer Euston was casting Orange Is the New Black, it stands to reason that she was selecting interesting performers first and, given the show’s evocative opening credits, interesting faces second. But somewhere on the opening page of criteria, there must have been a listing that read: “Must also be capable of fronting a Columbo-esque mystery procedural.”

In the case of Kate Mulgrew, she’d already starred in the iconic spinoff series, Mrs. Columbo. 

Natasha Lyonne is weeks away from the return of her Emmy-nominated turn as human lie detector Charlie Cale in Peacock’s Poker Face.

New to the murder-solving fray is Uzo Aduba, exceptionally eccentric in Netflix’s new Shondaland-produced The Residence. The show is the latest entry in both the burgeoning Orange Is the New Forensic Investigation genre and the even more burgeoning The World’s Greatest Detective Is a Weirdo genre. 

The Residence is an entertainingly chaotic goof, a dramedy that immediately sets a frantic tone that’s only occasionally varied in the seven episodes (out of eight total) sent to critics. I found it both amusing and exhausting, with Aduba’s performance and the energy of the wildly overstuffed ensemble elevating a mystery that’s treated with too much frenzy to ever become emotionally involving.

The series is set at the White House on the night of a state dinner honoring the prime minister of Australia (Julian McMahon, barely present), featuring a musical performance from Kylie Minogue (Kylie Minogue, in on the joke) and an appearance by an Australian celebrity whose presence or lack thereof is a running gag. 

As the president (Paul Fitzgerald’s Perry Morgan) and first gentleman (Barrett Foa’s Elliot) are hosting various luminaries, the White House staff is puttering around making the event go off without a hitch, which it does until the body of the White House chief usher (Giancarlo Esposito’s A.B. Wynter) is found upstairs in the game room.

Desperate to avoid an international incident, presidential advisor Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino) is eager to deem the death a suicide — Wynter is found with his wrists cut and a suicide note — and move on. 

Instead, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Larry Dokes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) arrives, accompanied by MPD consultant Cordelia Cupp (Aduba), dedicated birder, canned fish enthusiast and internationally admired sleuth. Cupp is paired with Edwin Park (Randall Park), a mild-mannered skeptic, and they begin the process of unraveling the case, with over 100 VIPs becoming increasingly impatient.

Also impatient? Members of some Senate committee or another, holding hearings on the investigation for reasons that still aren’t clear after seven episodes — hearings overseen by walking in-joke Al Franken as Senator Filkins and frequently disrupted by conspiracy-theorizing Senator Bix (Eliza Coupe), an amalgamation of at least three to five MAGA political punchlines.

So you have Cupp and Park interviewing various party guests and members of the White House staff, including Wynter’s second-in-command Jasmine (Susan Kelechi Watson); White House chef Marvella (Mary Wiseman) and pastry chef Didier (Bronson Pinchot, milking a Pinchotian Swiss-German accent); and hangers-on like the president’s salt-obsessed brother (Jason Lee‘s Tripp) and the first husband’s vodka-obsessed mother (Jane Curtin). 

Flashbacks featuring both what actually happened in the White House that evening and versions presented by unreliable witnesses accompany the investigation. By the sixth and seventh episodes, we’re getting flashbacks to things that happened in the previous episodes just in case you’re forgetful or confused. It’s just a lot.

One thing that becomes increasingly clear with each passing episode is that it’s one thing for Knives Out to take a fragmented approach in a two-hour movie, but extending that style across eight episodes (or more) — especially when viewers have no connection to the central case/victim — presents challenges that The Residence hasn’t quite figured out how to overcome. 

The Residence is playing three-card monte — shifting its various pieces around so hastily you maybe don’t notice that it only has three moves — instead of doing a more elaborately constructed magic trick. I haven’t seen the eighth episode, which will presumably reveal whodunnit, but if you asked me to posit a guess, my response would be, “Wait am I supposed to care?” 

Created by Paul William Davies, The Residence wears its inspirations proudly on its sleeve. Agatha Christie and Knives Out get name-checked in the dialogue. The scores for The Third Man and Charade get audio-checked in the soundtrack. Episode titles, delivered in cutely animated fashion, include “The Trouble with Harry” (Harry is, as I already said, the character played by Ken Marino), “The Last of Sheila” (Sheila is a housekeeper delightfully played by Edwina Findley) and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (because the deceased is, indeed, an usher).

Other recent shows about The Best Detective (or Detective Variation) in the World that are likely to come to mind while watching The Residence include Monsieur Spade, A Murder at the End of the World and Death and Other Details. 

The first thing that sets The Residence apart is the amusing precision of its setting. Kate Andersen Brower’s nonfiction upstairs/downstairs White House chronicle The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House was one of the show’s early inspirations, and the intersection of trivia and murder is far more evident and effectively handled than one might expect. Cordelia Cupp is a collector of esoteric information and her desire to learn things about the White House while also learning things about a crime borders on charming.

The series’ directors — Liza Johnson for the first four and then Jaffar Mahmood — take great pleasure in moving the camera through François Audouy’s reproductions of the White House, augmented by effects that turn it into a dollhouse of themed rooms, secret staircases and geographic oddities.

Of equal value is the ensemble assembled by casting director Meredith Tucker. You simply have to accept that not everybody is going to be fully, much less “well,” utilized, but that the pleasure of having some people pop up for a scene or two in order to help populate the universe is worth it. 

Lots of the people who are underutilized are still effective. Curtin mostly gives slightly drunken responses to things, probably with less than a dozen lines of dialogue, but every facial expression she tries out is hilarious. Coupe, Marino and Lee are in a comparably broad comedic register, each leaning into amusing notes of exasperation. Subtler turns come from Watson, very comfortably playing the straight woman to all of the outsized performances around her; Esposito, no stranger to this sort of unnervingly proper and repressed character; and Mel Rodriguez and Julieth Restrepo, whose work in the seventh episode is the closest the show comes to finding a sincere core. 

Aduba holds everything together with a deft turn, refusing to let Cordelia Cupp’s on-paper oddities ever become a caricature. It’s a subtle physical performance in which a precise tilt of the head — Cupp’s greatest trick is the silent interrogation — or careful wielding of birding binoculars help flesh out the genre-standard monologues flaunting Cupp’s impeccable gifts of perception and logical deduction. Her well-intentioned contempt for anybody who doesn’t share those gifts makes for a very amusing dynamic with Park’s Edwin, which finds the Fresh Off the Boat star getting the most out of his generally bemused material. Aduba and Whitlock, as the only person Cupp truly respects, have great scenes together, and this may be the funniest Whitlock has ever been in a part that didn’t require elongated repetition of the word “shit.”

As much as I liked the well-researched White House setting and many supporting players from the White House team, it’s the trio of Aduba, Park and Whitlock that I would love to see investigating future mysteries in different locations. It’s a great core, and Davies has a great sense of the genre’s signature patter. I just think the perfect execution would be to apply the elements that work to a case with a little more depth and a little more time to breathe (which doesn’t mean I want the series to be “longer” — just “better”).

Now as to which Orange Is the New Black star should get the next chance to investigate murder on TV? Danielle Brooks, Samira Wiley and Adrienne C. Moore are the easy answers. But I’m going with a pairing of Dianne Guerrero and Jackie Cruz. Flaca and Maritza reunited and fighting crime? That’s TV gold.