Death and Other Details Review

In the last five years of so, there’s been a resurgence of the murder mystery as a viable story both on the big and small screen. From Kenneth Branagh’s insistence on portraying Hercule Poirot in a series of Agatha Christie adaptations, to Rian Johnson’s excellent Knives Out series, to Only Murders in the Building becoming a bona fide hit for Hulu, if you’re a murder mystery person, you’ve got your pick of film and TV options – albeit of varying degrees of excellence. So, it’s hardly a shock that Hulu is going back to the murder mystery well with its latest offering, Death and Other Details, which pulls elements from all those series I mentioned above yet is unable to find a winning formula.

18 years ago, the world’s greatest detective (not his words, but a moniker thrust upon him by others) Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin, performing with aplomb and with a strange accent a la Branagh’s Poirot and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc) is tasked with solving the murder of young Imogene Scott’s mother. Alas, he’s unable to determine her killer, leaving poor Imogene heartbroken and throwing Cotesworth into a depression that lasts, you guessed it, until the start of the present day in the series. You see, the mega rich Collier family – who employed Imogene’s mother and who took her in as one of their own following her mother’s death – have chartered a yacht for the purposes of closing a key deal with another mega rich family. Along for the ride is the governor of Washington, a priest who also serves as a political king-maker, his social media obsessed teenage son, and Cotesworth. Naturally, a murder occurs, sparking an investigation that brings Cotesworth back into the detective game and forces him to confront his past failure while making amends to Imogene (played as an adult by Violett Beane).

Now, making a great murder mystery isn’t as easy as one might think. You need to have a manageable suspect list – with time to spend with each of the potential murderers to allow the audience to get to know them. You also need at least one sympathetic character for the audience to root for – it could be the detective, the victim, or someone who seems like the perfect guilty party. And you need a plot that has a few twists and turns but that remains relatively easy to follow and not so complex that when the killer is revealed it’s hard to follow the clues back to understand just what happened. Unfortunately, while there are some things to like about Death and Other Details – and the series does get better the further you get into the season – the series manages to go 0-for-3 in this case.

To start with, there are way too many characters to keep track of in the early going – in addition to the guests on the yacht (the Collier family alone consists of four central Colliers, Imogene, and Anna’s – the eldest and heir apparent to the CEO position – wife) there’s also a shockingly large number of staff members who factor into the plot in key ways. Yes, by episode eight the key characters are fleshed out just enough that you can guess where things might be headed, but we still spend far too little time with characters who appear important – or who factor into key plot points in important ways. There are also two love triangles in the series and their reveals are handled so poorly and with so little depth that they seem to come out of nowhere when they are revealed.* There are also no truly sympathetic characters. If I had to reach, I would cite Anna’s wife, Leila, as the most sympathetic of the lot. But she’s mostly on the periphery of the central action throughout. But I definitely found myself hoping she could get away from this awful bunch of folks and get a fresh start, because man, some of these characters are pretty odious. And then there’s the plot. It all tracks and makes sense on the surface, but the key central arc – of just who is pulling the strings – is so drawn out and takes forever to really get a handle on narratively that it’s incredibly frustrating. I won’t say more out of fear of spoiling things, but for a ten-episode series, the writing needed another solid two episodes to fully flesh out its characters but also needed two fewer episodes in terms of its central villain arc.

*Just a heads up for anyone thinking this might be a fun series – a la Only Murders – to watch with your tween. Yes, there’s some serious violence and language here, but there’s also some pretty graphic sex scenes and nudity. This isn’t a family murder mystery. You’ve been warned.

There’s definitely some things worth recommending in the series. Patinkin is a solid lead and Beane is more than up to the task of being his second in command. And Pardis Seremi, who plays Leila, is particularly affecting in ways you wouldn’t think following the character’s initial introduction in the premiere. But with such a jumbled plot early on and far too many characters to boot, well, the strength of the series later episodes (from episode six on, the show gets into a groove that should have been present much earlier) can’t quite make up for what comes before. If you’re looking for a new Only Murders in the Building, this, unfortunately, isn’t it.

Death and Other Details premieres on January 16 on Hulu. Eight of the series’ ten episodes were provided for review.