There’s nothing funny about murder, but it’s a handy device on which to hang a comedy.
To be sure, there are those who like their mysteries dark and — ugh — “gritty.” But the tenderhearted like their puzzles too, and the whole rigmarole of eccentric sleuths, colorful suspects and solve-along-at-home stories; for them — and I mean us — the world is troubling enough without adding invented psychopaths and serial killers to the heap. A spoonful of sugar helps the homicide go down.
Two new mysteries full of comedy, or comedies full of mystery, premiere Thursday. “The Residence,” on Netflix, stars Uzo Aduba as a sleuth with a passion for bird-watching; “Ludwig,” on BritBox, offers David Mitchell as a professional puzzle maker impersonating his missing twin brother, a police detective. They’re tonally distinct, but both are fun and easy to recommend.
Created and written by Paul William Davies, “The Residence” is essentially a blown-out version of an Agatha Christie country-house mystery — a fact it acknowledges with a shot of a Christie paperback — set in the White House, among its many chambers, public, private and practical. (There are some cute dollhouse representations of the layout, and the life-size re-creations are impressive.) With its upstairs-downstairs dynamic — the “us” and “them” of it is explicitly laid out — large cast and grand beehive setting, it suggests a wackier contemporary American “Gosford Park.”
The victim is White House head usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito), who keeps things running smoothly around the place, found dead in the family quarters as a wingding is underway in a ballroom below. The party is celebrating Australia, which makes possible a guest shot from Kylie Minogue, who will perform, and a running joke involving Hugh Jackman, whose face is never seen, as the actor is not Hugh Jackman, which is part of the joke. Unless, it actually is Hugh Jackman, which would be an even better joke.
Who killed White House usher A.B. Wynter? There is no lack of suspects in “The Residence.”
(Jessica Brooks / Netflix)
The discovery of the body, an apparent suicide — though anyone with any experience of TV mysteries will spot problems — brings in representatives from the FBI, the Park Police and the local constabulary, whose chief (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) arrives with “world’s greatest” Det. Cornelia Cupp (Aduba). “Wow, it’s a lot of dudes,” she says, eyeballing the assembled lawmen, including FBI Special Agent Edwin Park (Randall Park), who will become her doubting partner through the investigation.
There are no lack of suspects. Is it assistant usher Jasmine Haney (Susan Kelechi Watson), tired of waiting for Wynter’s job; the president’s shiftless brother Tripp Morgan (Jason Lee) and dipsomaniac mother-in-law Nan Cox (Jane Curtin); his best friend and advisor Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino), who yells a lot; or First Gentleman Elliot Morgan (Barrett Foa)? (In this fantasy world, America has elected a gay president, played by Paul Fitzgerald.) Could it be the disgruntled Swiss pastry chef (Bronson Pinchot); the ambitious new head chef (May Wiseman); the social secretary (Molly Griffs), who wants to “reinvent the White House as a concept”; the drunk butler (Edwina Findley); the tall butler (Al Mitchell); the gardener (Rebecca Field); or the engineer (Mel Rodriguez)? Or one of too many others to mention?
The plot is framed by testimony developed at a subsequent congressional investigation, chaired by a senator played by Al Franken, formerly a real-life senator, with Eliza Coupe as an opposition troublemaker. Marino’s character will accuse Franken’s character of turning the hearing into “a murder mystery.” “Murder mysteries are so popular right now,” replies Franken, getting meta for a moment.
Few of the characters represent more than an attitude, but the actors are having a contagious good time, and Aduba’s detective seems deep by virtue of being something of an enigma; her preferred method of interrogation is to stare and say nothing. (She will get a bit of broadening backstory, or side-story, eventually). Things in her head are always clicking, though she is liable too to go off birding, for which the White House grounds are apparently quite good. Aduba’s an imposing presence in any case, and one would hope to see her character enlisted in further Cornelia Cupp adventures — the name itself seems too good to waste — if perhaps shorter than the current season’s eight episodes, which are by temporal necessity here and there padded. (“It’s hard to keep track of everything,” Cupp says at one point, as if in sympathy with the viewer.) There could be twice as many stories if they made them half as long, and four times as many at a perfectly generous two hours.
David Mitchell stars as John “Ludwig” Taylor in BritBox’s “Ludwig.”
(Colin Hutton / BritBox)
In the wonderful, Cambridge-set “Ludwig,” David Mitchell, best known here for “Peep Show,” “Upstart Crow” and as an irascible team captain on the panel show “Would I Lie to You?,” plays John Taylor, a professional inventor of puzzles — awkward, timid, with no social life and a disconnect from and disdain for modern times that Mitchell’s own self-presentation sometimes suggests. (No one expresses disdain quite as hilariously.) “Ludwig” is how John signs his puzzles, which allows for a score borrowed from Beethoven; there’s no deeper meaning, unless I missed it.
When his twin brother, Det. Chief Inspector James Taylor, disappears, John’s sister-in-law, Lucy (the divine Anna Maxwell Martin) enlists John to impersonate James in order to search his office for clues; but John, mistaken for James, is drafted into an investigation, and because he has a talent for seeing abstractly and solving things, he finds himself stuck in the role. His greater challenge, and the source of the series’ comedy, is impersonating a more-or-less normal person — even though John’s been rated “two points above” genius, “I find that never helps when it comes to chatting.” He calls a medical examiner’s report a “how-did-they-die test,” he can’t park a car properly, and, having lived largely inside his house, has a limited understanding of ordinary human concourse.
The six-episode show combines episodic mysteries with a seasonal plotline surrounding the whereabouts of James, which Lucy takes up — a fast-slow rhythm that keeps things lively in the short term and intriguing in the long. It’s a dramatic given that John, who begins this adventure unsure of himself, will become more confident as the job goes on and become closer to his adopted colleagues, especially partner Det. Inspector Russell Carter (Dipo Ola), just as by moving in with Lucy and teenage nephew, Henry (Dylan Hughes), he’ll gain a richer experience of family.
Mitchell is really the sole comic figure here, but on his own he’s enough to call “Ludwig” a comedy. Still, some deep drama — amplified by the Beethoven quotes on the soundtrack — surrounds him, and involves him, as John reckons with his past and present. Every mystery sets its own level of emotional depth, but even those in which murder is little more than an excuse for the detective to get out of bed and the story no more profound than a game of Clue can turn sad as motives are revealed and hapless killers taken away. “Ludwig” plays its minor and major chords, its darker and lighter passages, with equal clarity and force.
