The Residence!

Winter tis the season to watch/play/read murder mysteries.

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it enough that I watched it in one BIG sweep of a day over two sessions. The pacing didn’t quite work for me, but that was likely partially my fault (see preceding sentence). What really threw me is I knew I recognized one of the lead actors playing Harry Hollinger, Ken Marino. Afterwards, I figured out I knew him because he played a character in the very first - and very impactful - Sundance film I watched: Help Me Understand. He’s extremely skilled at expressing a wide range of frustration with multiple layers, which showed well in both of these roles.

This show did something that wasn’t really my favorite, that I see in many Agatha Christie novels: it withheld a critical piece of evidence that would have made it possible to identify the killer by my own power. Instead, I had to wait for the detective (and/or killer) to reveal the information. This is one of my least favorite parts of Agatha Christie’s books, but fortunately The Residence’s cast - and especially its main detective - were engaging and entertaining enough to keep me in it regardless.

(As an example of a mystery that does give you all of the clues, Wake Up Dead Man is in fact solvable by your own power before the reveal; there’s just characters misdirecting you as they personally notice things during the investigation. There’s obfuscation of giveaways, but not of key evidence. It’s a very good mystery, with a similarly great cast of characters.)

The show also tried to convince me that two other characters had whodunnited, and it was just so obviously not them that I got bored of the conceit before it had finished. I definitely think it's worth watching, and it sounds like it's even better with friends, but maybe don't watch it all in one go like I did.