#Watching #TheResidence (netflix) 8 episodes
this was soooooo good. 12 out of 10.
not usually a great fan of whodunnits, and the british drawing room “reveal” genre where the mystery is explained is a bit of a yawn (that’s just a personal thing, not a declaration that it is “wrong” to tell stories this way.)
any-hoo — The Residence is about the section of the White House where family/ friends/ hangers on of the US president live.
When somebody dies there, Cordelia Cupp, the world’s best detective, is called in to solve the mystery. it’s a bit of a US version of upstairs downstairs.
Cordelia is played by #UzoAduba, who has always had an expressive face, and the ability to deliver wordy dialogue with clarity and conviction — and there is a LOT of dialogue. The review in BlackGirlNerd described it as <comedic tennis>, and that’s an apt description. There are some amusing rallies.
“Back in the day” movies like Adam’s Rib (1949) were very wordy, because a lot of movies were “radio with pictures”. Then came an era of “show don’t tell”. The Residence is very “show AND tell”. Friend watched it with her ears while playing dice and scrabble on her ipad and missed a lot of visual humour.
It’s a treat to watch, and I must say a lot of care and imagination has gone into bringing this to life. The residence itself is almost a character in the story — we often have a “doll’s house view” so we get a sense of place and location, and sometimes a bird’s eye view (cordelia likes birds). There is even a gingerbread house version that features in the story. The visual humour owes a great deal to some excellent editing, and what must have been extra hours setting up to shoot scenes to show multiple points of view.
sometimes we get glimpses of a character’s character by looking at them in their own milieu; and there is a truly delightful scene where cordelia is with her young nephew and we get to observe him being a young boy “like nobody’s watching”
Jane Curtin has fun as the president’s mother in law.
the president’s brother in law is an annoying anus as a character but the only character that’s annoying to watch, (bit of a stock US character)
running gags about australia, forgiveable because of the president’s brother in law being such a stereotype of USian, the australian prime minister is played by julian mcmahon, (son of sir william 
, for old farts like me who remember him), and kylie Minogue is there
the story is really well constructed. mostly i enjoyed it because it was different.
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