At a certain point, we have to start feeling bad for the last five famous actors who have not yet appeared on a lighthearted streaming murder show. They didn’t get to be the detective, or the murderer, or the one with the biggest secret, but not even being cast as themselves in a winky, self-aware cameo? Yeesh.
As with many current show in its pitch and timbre, “The Residence” is a conveyor belt of famous faces, including Uzo Aduba, Eliza Coupe, Jane Curtin, Giancarlo Esposito, Al Franken, Taran Killam, Jason Lee, Ken Marino, Randall Park, Bronson Pinchot, Susan Kelechi Watson and Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Kylie Minogue makes a winky, self-aware cameo as herself.) It is certainly one way to thwart viewers’ “Law and Order”-honed skill of identifying the famous guest star as the central criminal.
“The Residence,” on Netflix, is a boppy little murder mystery set in the White House. Paul William Davies is the show’s creator and the writer of every episode, with Davies, Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as executive producers; it is based on the nonfiction book “The Residence,” by Kate Andersen Brower.
Davies’s previous work includes “Scandal,” and the shows share a similar vague relationship to presidential history, but there is no screen-melting romance here. “The Residence” does not have the sizzle or sudsiness of other Shondaland titles, nor is it particularly provocative; its big innovation is that the president (Paul Fitzgerald) is a white gay man who lives in the White House with his husband (Barrett Foa), brother (Lee) and mother-in-law (Curtin).
That’s not to say it isn’t fun. It is, with ample Agatha Christie references, a whooshing momentum and plenty of intrigue.
It’s the night of a chaotic state dinner, and the White House chief usher, A.B. Wynter (Esposito), turns up dead. (Andre Braugher, who died in December, was originally cast in the role.) Everyone’s a suspect: the guests, the staff, the first family. This calls for a genius investigator, and not just any genius. A quirky genius! Enter Cordelia Cupp (Aduba), an avid birder and obsessive observer of details. The game is afoot.
Because we live in a fallen world, “The Residence” is told in flashback. In the present day, the characters are fielding questions at a congressional hearing, and we jump back to the night of the crime through their recollections. This is just one of the show’s mechanisms for constantly recapping itself. The senators (Franken and Coupe) summarize the story periodically, and the witnesses restate the plot.
Even outside the hearing, various characters reexplain the entire investigation. “It’s hard to keep track of everything,” Cupp says, again rattling off every thread. “Run this back for me,” says another, and lo, they run it back. The show seems extremely concerned that its viewers are confused. The characters repeatedly hold up signs with their names and jobs on them, and many appear only in their specific uniforms. Maybe it’s part of Netflix’s signature move to have characters describe what they are doing for viewers who are checked out.
When not laboring to make the show legible to half-watchers and the recently concussed, “The Residence” is actually pretty fun. Aduba is superb, exuding rigid brilliance and appeal. She’s also the show’s best volleying partner; the characters are their most interesting and vibrant when talking to Cupp.
The production design, from François Audouy, is also a treat and a half. We see a sliced-open dollhouse version of the White House periodically, and a volatile pastry chef (Pinchot) makes an elaborate gingerbread version, too. The opening titles are illustrated by Maira Kalman, and we see Cupp’s pencil illustrations of various people of interest in her sketchbook. It all adds a layer of enchantment, of playfulness.
Despite its setting, “The Residence” is not a political show in the seven of eight episodes made available for review, and its most significant and surprising political events occur in brief, vague flashback late in the season.
Its closet relative is, of course, “Only Murders in the Building,” and Cupp is cut from the same tweed cloth as the main character on “Ludwig,” who is also a fussy big-time birder. It also feels occasionally like the slightly goofy political thriller “Paradise,” in which the president’s murder is the one being solved, and also like “Downton Abbey” or “Upstairs Downstairs” in its depictions of how much labor is involved in maintaining a massive, opulent facility.
On “The Residence,” we hear often about how other presidents and first families have behaved in the White House, mostly those from long ago but also including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. How we got from those administrations to President Morgan and his First Gentleman, Elliot, is not specified. The show is still set in our world: Tim Cook is the head of Apple, and Jake Tapper is on CNN. Part of its appeal, then, is not just that it is a mystery — it’s also a fantasy.