Every episode title of Netflix whodunit The Residence refers to a classic of crime fiction

Any crime fiction tragic knows that part of what makes a mystery delicious is how much it pays homage to everything that came before it.

The whodunit is a genre that really benefits from playing with the tropes, whether slavishly or irreverently, and devotees can spot the easter eggs from miles off. It’s one of the few times filmmakers can do this without it seeming like pure fan service.

The Residence, a murder mystery set in the White House, debuted on Netflix last week and is currently sitting second on the charts in Australia. It draws inspiration from Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Marple and Poirot and so much more.

One of its most nod-nod-wink-winks to whodunit fans is its episode titles, which reference a theme or plot point in the episode, but is also the name of a classic of the genre.

Here are all the episode names and the works to which The Residence was referring.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

The series opener establishes the killing of A.B Wynter, the chief usher of the White House, which is a double-word tie-in to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story.

First published in 1839, The Fall of the House of Usher is a haunted house mystery centred on an unnamed narrator who arrives at the home of his childhood friend Roderick and his twin sister Madeline. It’s also been adapted a bunch of times for screen, most recently by Mike Flanagan in a miniseries that draws on this story as well as other Poe works.

Poe is considered a luminary of gothic fiction and he also wrote what is often considered the first modern detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which introduced C. Auguste Dupin, who set the bar for many of the fictional sleuths to follow.

DIAL M FOR MURDER

The title references the strange phone call that came from the garden shed to A.B. Wynter not long before he was killed, and which prompted him to say that he would die before the end of the day. Ominous

Dial M for Murder, of course, is the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milliband, centred on a former tennis player who wants to kill his wife and claim her inheritance for himself. Honestly, these bloody men.

The film had originally been a stage production and playwright Frederick Knott wrote the scripts for both. Some of the supporting actors reprised their roles from the stage. This was the first of three films Kelly made for Hitchcock.

KNIVES OUT

The Residence creator Paul William Davies loves Rian Johnson’s Knives Out for revitalising the whodunit, so it’s not surprising to see the title pop up here. The in-episode reference is a nod to the prime suspect of this episode, the pastry chef Didier Gotthard and his sharp implement.

Johnson’s 2019 film was a classic closed house mystery with a wealthy, dead patriarch and a family full of suspects, all with their own motives. But the perpetrator proved no match for Benoit Blanc, a mercurial private detective played with relish by Daniel Craig.

The success of Knives spawned a now-franchise with Netflix buying up the rights for two follow-up films for a princely $US450 million. The first sequel, Glass Onion, which saw Benoit take his sleuthing skills to another mystery, was released in 2022, while Wake Up Dead Man will be out later this year.

THE LAST OF SHEILA

The Sheila in the episode title is Sheila Cannon, a butler in The Residence with a penchant for downing straight vodka and getting too chummy with a former First Lady.

The Last of Sheila is a 1973 film written by, no less, Anthony Perkins (as in, Psycho) and Stephen Sondheim, and starring James Mason, James Coburn, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch and a young Ian McShane.

The story takes place onboard a yacht cruising the Mediterranean with a group of people who had all been present when Sheila, the host’s wife, was killed a year earlier.

The Last of Sheila was actually an influence on Johnson when he made Glass Onion, who referenced it and the likes of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, as sun-drenched holiday murders.

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY

An episode focused on Harry Hollinger, the bombastic chief advisor to the President. If he’s not guilty of murder, he’s definitely not innocent of other things.

This is a second Hitchcock reference, although The Trouble with Harry is one of the legendary filmmaker’s more lighthearted concoctions. You could even go so far as to describe it as a comedy.

The story takes place in a small, idyllic village where its residents try to figure out what to do with the corpse of a man named Harry, in some instances, trying to convince others he’s still alive. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Weekend at Bernie’s basically cribbed Hitch.

THE THIRD MAN

The third man here is Patrick Doumbe, a seemingly unconnected person who crashed the White House state dinner with some partying Australians.

The actual The Third Man is a 1949 film noir starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli, and directed by Carol Reed. Acclaimed novelist and journalist Graham Greene wrote the screenplay about an American writer who arrives in Vienna for a job with his friend only to discover that maid is dead. While investigating that death, he falls for his departed friend’s girlfriend.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER’S THUMB

The engineer in The Residence is Bruce Gellar, a White House staffer with a serious crush on Elsie, a housemaid, and this episode exposes how their flirtation might have become wrapped up – inadvertently or not – in the death of A.B. Wynter.

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb is a Sherlock Holmes short story, one of 56 Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. The plot centred on an engineer who alerts Sherlock to a strange commission he had involving a hydraulic press and what turned out to be a counterfeit ring.

THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM

The finale episode is named for the White House room in which the crime was committed and for Gaston Leroux’s 1908 mystery novel. Leroux’s book introduced reporter Joseph Rouletabille, who would reappear in several more stories by the French author.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is considered one of the first, if not the actual first, locked room puzzle in which the perpetrator has seemingly vanished from within, you guessed it, a locked room.

The victim in this case is Mathilde, who found severely injured in a room with the door still locked from the inside.