The Residence (2025)

Growing up, the boardgame CLUE was a staple in our family-time tradition. In middle school, I saw “Clue” (1985) at a friend’s house, but I remember approximately zero details from it.

It wasn’t until 2019’s “Knives Out” that I actually paid attention to a murder mystery and I loved it.

Now, I’ve never read an Agatha Christie novel or any other whodunnit books, because that’s simply not a genre I’m interested in reading, but I do enjoy watching them.

With my new-found love of murder-mystery movies, I’ve seen “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017), “Glass Onion” (2022), and “Death on the Nile” (2022), and I’m very excited for the upcoming “Wake Up Deadman” (2025) that comes out next month.

And of course, a bunch of regular detective media: “Sherlock Holmes” (2009, 2011), “Sherlock (2010-2017), “Enola Holmes” (2020, 2022), “House” (2004-2012), and “Elementary” (2012-2019).
While those have mysteries to solve, none of them are proper whodunnits.

Because of all of that, when I saw “The Residence” (2025) on Netflix, I was intrigued: a murder mystery at the Whitehouse (where the killing was NOT politically motivated) played out over eight hours of a show.
Could this be good?
Would the mystery and deduction work fill out a miniseries?
Could Shandaland produce something good that wasn’t a bodice-buster-turned-television after the studio rose to prominence with “Bridgerton” (2020+).

The answer: a resounding YES to all of the above.

Head usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) was found dead in the gameroom of the Whitehouse during the state dinner where President Morgan (Paul Fitzgerald) was attempting to repair relations with the Australian government and visiting Prime Minister Roos (Julian McMahon).

While Morgan’s best friend Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino) wanted to immediately rule the death a suicide to prevent any kind of scandal for his presidential pal, world-famous detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) was brought in – she’d coincidentally been at Dulles Internation Airport ready to depart on a flight, so she was close enough for the Secret Service to pick her up and bring her over.

Detective Cupp ruled it to be a homicide immediately and set about questioning every single person in the Whitehouse – from staff members to honored guests – to figure out what had actually caused Wynter’s untimely demise.

Here’s the coolest part: the entire series was told via a Senate hearing about Whitehouse security. Led by Senator Filkins (Al Franken) and oft interrupted by Senator Margery Bay Bix (Eliza Coupe), Whitehouse staff members and FBI personnel alike relayed pieces of the story, shown to the viewers as flashbacks interspersed with questions from Sen. Filkins; the Senators were learning the story along side the audience, interjecting questions that served to fill in the gaps for us viewers.

Even the finale, where Cupp was relaying how she figured out whodunnit, was by her sitting in the hearing and relaying it.

Entertainingly, both Senators Filkins and Bix held up their hand-written notes at the end showing who they thought did it, after Cupp’s final reveal.

Hint: you will get it wrong too.

Over the eight episodes and a total runtime of almost nine hours, nothing felt like filler. Every flashback, every seemingly inconsequential scene, every character that was interviewed about the murder, had a purpose and a use towards the finale. Director Paul William Davies knew exactly how much time he needed to tell his story and utilized every single second with magnificent precision.

Cordelia Cupp’s character, like all great detectives before her, was a curious person with an aloof attitude and a rather strong disconnect from regular people: she was an avid bird watcher (“birder”?) who connected almost every method of her deductive process to some trait of the rare birds she was looking for. Often that meant that other characters thought she was simply goofing off in the Whitehouse lawn with her binoculars, but she always revealed some tie between the birds and the dead body.

The soundtrack was entirely orchestral and sounded so very close to the opening tune of Serial season 1. Given that every scene was perfectly crafted, there’s no chance that the aural similarities were chance; the jaunty music in The Residence was a clear homage.
It’s not a soundtrack I would ever listen to on its own, but it fit so perfectly to the show.

There were limited special effects: the series took place almost entirely inside the Whitehouse, and since I doubt either the Trump or Biden administrations would have shut down huge chunks of the building for filming, that means there’s a 1:1 replica of most of the rooms on a soundstage somewhere. The rare CGI scenes were used to zoom out of a scene to show the floorplan, or a cutaway of the building, or some other impossible movement that cameras simply couldn’t do. At one point, pastry chef Didier Gotthard (Bronson Pinchot) made an open-backed gingerbread replica/dollhouse of the Whitehouse, adding to the fun of the camera direction.

Smartly, the political affiliations of President Morgan were never identified, nor was it even slightly alluded to which President he was succeeding. No current events were discussed and no foreign wars or activities were mentioned, only that the prior President had managed to piss off Australia and Morgan was trying to set the record straight.

The extent of politics in this show were entirely constrained to those of the Whitehouse staff and how they interacted with each other.

In one flashback, A.B. Wynter even said something along the lines of “We, the staff of the Whitehouse, do not serve the President. We serve the House, and thus whichever president happens to be here at the time.

Genius, and a perfectly concise way to explain the loyalties of the people who keep the Whitehouse in order.

I loved this more than any murder mystery movie I’ve seen (admittedly not a lot).
I envy you, dear reader, who gets to watch this for the first time and enjoy the mystery with fresh eyes.
While a potential sequel season obviously couldn’t happen in the Whitehouse, I’d love to see Cordelia Cupp return to solve mysteries somewhere else in the proper anthology tradition.

I know this will never end up in theaters, but it absolutely earned 5 Claws for being absolutely phenomenal.