There is nothing funny in murder, but it is a practical device on which to hang a comedy.
Certainly, there are those who love their dark mysteries and – ugh – “granular”. But tender guards like their puzzles, and all the jigs of eccentric detectives, colorful suspects and solve stories at home; For them – and I mean us – the world is quite disturbing without adding invented psychopaths and serial killers to the job. A spoonful of sugar helps homicide to drop.
Two new mysteries full of comedy, or comedies full of mystery, first Thursday. “The residence”, on Netflix, stars The Natural Way like a detective with a passion for the observation of birds; “Ludwig”, on Britbox, offers David Mitchell as a professional puzzle manufacturer imitating his missing twin brother, a police detective. They are distinct, but both are fun and easy to recommend.
Created and written by Paul William Davies, “The Residence” is essentially a version blown of a country -house Agatha Christie – a fact that he recognizes with a photo of a pocket book by Christie – established in the White House, among her many rooms, public, private and practical. (There are cute representations of doll houses of the arrangement, and life -size recreation are impressive.) With its dynamics upstairs – the “we” and the “them” are explicitly arranged – large casting and large shelter, this suggests a more eccentric contemporary American “Gosford Park.”
The victim is the head of the White House Usher Ab Wyter (Giancarlo Esposito), which continues to work smoothly around the place, found dead in the family districts while a wing is in class in a ballroom below. The party celebrates Australia, which makes a guest from Kylie Minogue possible, who will perform, and a racing joke involving Hugh Jackman, whose face is never seen, because the actor is not Hugh Jackman, who is part of the joke. Unless Hugh Jackman, which would be an even better joke.
Who killed USHER AB Wynter from the White House? There is no shortage of suspects in “residence”.
(Jessica Brooks / Netflix)
The discovery of the body, an apparent suicide – although anyone with an experience of television mysteries will identify problems – brings representatives of the FBI, the Park and the local gendarmerie police, whose chief (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) arrives with the “largest world”. Cornelia Cupp (Aduba). “Wow is a lot of guys,” she says, global, including the legislators gathered, including the special agent of the FBI Edwin Park (Randall Park), who will become his partner of doubt thanks to the investigation.
There is no shortage of suspects. Does the assistant Usher Jasmine Haney (Susan Kelechi Watson), tired of waiting for Wynter's work; the brother without gap of President Tripp Morgan (Jason Lee) and the mother-in-law of Dipsomania Nan Cox (Jane Curtin); His best friend and advisor Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino), who shouts a lot; Or the first gentleman Elliot Morgan (Barrett Foa)? (In this fantastic world, America elected a gay president, played by Paul Fitzgerald.) Could it be the disgruntled pastry chef (Bronson Pinchot); The new ambitious chief (May Wiseman); The Secretary Pamboles (Molly Griffs), who wants to “reinvent the White House as a concept”; The drunk butler (Edwina Findley); The great butler (Al Mitchell); The gardener (Rebecca field); Or the engineer (Mel Rodriguez)? Or one of the too other to mention?
The intrigue is supervised by testimonies developed during a subsequent investigation by the Congress, chaired by a senator played by Al Franken, formerly a real senator, with Eliza Coupé as an opposition disturbance. The character of Marino will accuse Franken's character of transforming the audience into “a mystery of murder”. “The mysteries of murder are so popular at the moment,” replied Franken, getting Meta for a while.
Few characters represent more than an attitude, but the actors have a good contagious time, and the detective of Aduba seems deeply under something of an enigma; His favorite interrogation method is to look and say nothing. (It will get a little widening of the background, or lateral history, possibly). Things in her head always click, even if she is also likely to leave the birds, for which the White House land is apparently good. Aduba is an imposing presence in any case, and we hope to see his character enrolled in other adventures of Cornelia Cupp – the name itself seems too good to waste – if it is perhaps shorter than the eight episodes of the current season, which are out of time necessity here and upside down. (“It is difficult to keep a trace of everything,” said Cupp at one point, as in sympathy with the spectator.) There could be twice as many stories if they did them half long and four times more to two perfectly generous hours.
David Mitchell embodies John “Ludwig” Taylor in “Ludwig” by Britbox.
(Colin Hutton / Britbox)
In the wonderful “Ludwig” of Cambridge-Set, David Mitchell, better known here for “Peep Show” “ “Corbaleant reached” And as an irascible team captain in the sign show “Would I lie to you?” I play John Taylor, a professional inventor of puzzles – clumsy, shy, without social life and disconnect and disdain for modern times that the own presentation of Mitchell sometimes suggests. (Nobody expresses the disdain so hilarious.) “Ludwig” is the way John signs his puzzles, which allows a partition borrowed from Beethoven; There is no deeper meaning, unless I missed it.
When his twin brother, det. Chief Inspector James Taylor disappears, John's sister-in-law, Lucy (Divine Anna Maxwell Martin) prohibits John to imitate James in order to search for his office for clues; But John, confusing with James, is written in an investigation, and because he has a talent to see in an abstract way and solve things, he finds himself stuck in the role. His biggest challenge, and the source of the comedy in the series, is to identify a more or less normal person – even if John was evaluated “two points above”, “I find that it never helps when it comes to discussing”. He calls a report by a medical examiner A “test how Did-they-Die”, he cannot properly park a car and, having lived largely inside his house, has a limited understanding of the ordinary human hall.
The spectacle of six episodes combines episodic mysteries with a seasonal intrigue surrounding the fate of James, which Lucy takes – a quick rhythm that keeps things lively in the short term and intriguing in the long run. It is a dramatic given that John, who begins this uncertain adventure of himself, will become more confident as the work continues and approaches his adoptive colleagues, in particular the partner Det. Inspector Russell Carter (Dipo Ola), just like moving up with Lucy and a teenage nephew, Henry (Dylan Hughes), he will acquire a richer family experience.
Mitchell is really the only comic strip here, but only it is enough to call a comedy “Ludwig”. However, a deep drama – amplified by Beethoven's quotes on the soundtrack – surrounds and implies it, as John considers it with its past and its present. Each mystery establishes its own level of emotional depth, but even those in which the murder is hardly more than an excuse for the detective to come out of the bed and that the story is no deeper than a game of index can become sad because patterns are revealed and that the unhappy killers removed. “Ludwig” plays its minor and major agreements, its darker and lighter passages, with equal clarity and strength.
