American Gothic (2016)

This is a good summer mystery to take your mind off the heat.

It is a chillingly enjoyable whodunnit for a lazy summer evening. The biggest danger is that the ratings are good and CBS tries to extend it past the 13 episodes scheduled for this summer. There's a reason Agatha Christie never tried to turn Murder on the Orient Express into a TV series.

While you shouldn’t look for American Gothic to enter the Emmy conversation in the history of ever, that’s simply not the point of it. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a weird, sometimes eerie distraction that won’t require rewinding if a few lines of dialogue get downed out by the air conditioner, CBS’ newest offering might be a summer series that slays.

Whodunit? After screening the first two episodes, I have no idea. But I'm engaged enough to keep watching to find out.

Whether Gothic has enough energy to go the distance remains to be seen, but as it stands, the show isn’t urgent except for people who have a bottomless appetite for this kind of story, or those who have yet to taste it.