The Residence on Netflix: Delicious murder mystery that leans into all the genre tropes

The premise is utterly, utterly delicious.

The White House is hosting a state dinner for the Australian Prime Minister, the foreign minister, the defence minister and a blowhard industry mogul. Kylie Minogue, in a sparkly purple gown, is performing for almost 200 guests in one of the fancy ballrooms.

But on the third floor, the body of the chief usher lies dead in the billiards room, blood splatter on his shirt, an empty crystal glass on the window sill nearby.

Everyone is a suspect – the president, his chief adviser, his no-good brother, the PM, the tempestuous chef, the wily dessert master, the well-liked maid, the deputy usher, the mysterious stranger, the alcoholic butler and even our Kylie.

Who did it? All of them? None of them? Someone else entirely?

The Residence is the latest offering from mega-producer Shonda Rhimes, created by Paul William Davies, who had been a writer on another White House-set Shondaland show, Scandal.

This couldn’t be further from the dramatic soap opera milieu of Scandal, although there are plenty of twists and turns.

The mercurial detective is Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba), fashioned after the kooky sleuths of the genre and she even has the Holmesian tweeds to prove it.

Cordelia’s methods, which often involves starring at her not-suspects (there are no suspects in her investigations, only interesting people) until the uncomfortable silence forces others to fill it with confessional titbits, frustrate everyone around her, including FBI agent Edwin Park (Randall Park).

The White House’s political staff (Ken Marino’s Harry Hollinger among them) want this wrapped up so the taint of scandal doesn’t hang around, but Cordelia has her process.

The series has its origins in Davies’ love of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and even Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films, as well as a non-fiction book about the history of the White House residence’s non-political staff, the engineers, servers and cooks that allow the functioning of one of the most famous institutions in the world.

The marriage of the two resulted in this admittedly arch eight-part series, but one which genre fans will delight in.

It’s not perfect – the 50-minute episodes could’ve have been half-hour, it probably could’ve been a movie, there’s a framing story set during a congressional hearing that was probably unnecessary and overuses the Greek chorus motif – but it leans heavily into the closed house tropes.

This is a genre that works best when it plays with everything in its toolbox. You can see the influences of The Residence’s predecessors, including Cluedo (game and movie), Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, the golden age murder mysteries and Alfred Hitchcock.

All the episodes are named after murder mysteries, including Dial M for Murder, The Last of Sheila and The Fall of the House of Usher, so it is definitely a love letter.

With a cast that also includes Giancarlo Esposito, Jane Curtain, Susan Kelechi Watson, Jason Lee, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Bronson Pinchot and Julian McMahon, The Residence is all about indulging in fun. Don’t think too hard, just go with it.

The armchair detectives are going to devour it.

The Residence is on Netflix