Death and Other Details

With a host of embargoed topics we can’t reveal, I can attest that Death and Other Details is more complex than expected and gets smarter and more clever as it goes along. Beane and Patinkin are an excellent entry into the pantheon of mystery duos, and I’m looking forward to seeing if they stick the landing in the final two installments.

We start with a murder, and then maybe one more, and perhaps another, before the world’s greatest detective(s) get to the bottom of things. That’s the fun of it, and “Death and Other Details” is all about the fun, even when someone goes down for the count.

While the premise of Death and Other Details may seem derivative, the series is much more than a simple imitation. It’s a keenly modern, thoughtful meditation on the simultaneously distortive and revelatory nature of the human memory.

Don’t let that or its initial crawling momentum stop you from enjoying Death And Other Details. It eventually overcomes its flaws, delivering a vivid caper that feels both cozy and refreshing at the same time.

“Death” has a few twists too many, but it’s a pleasant and surprisingly digestible watch despite some formally complicated flashbacks and an enormous cast.

While so many Agatha Christie-influenced murder-mysteries get bogged down in the macabre, Death And Other Details remembers that these stories should be a blast. Mandy Patinkin and his recruited assistant Imogene (Violett Bean) are utterly charming, and the show is a hoot, even if the crimes themselves aren't particularly engaging.

Not perfectly plausible, in big and little ways, but its energy and reveals upon reveals make that moot. Patinkin, in an indefinable accent, is his usual Big Presence, but Beane holds her own, and the arrival of Linda Emond as Interpol agent Hilde Eriksen pays constant comic dividends.

Fast-paced and complex, the series ebbs and flows between delightful chaos and complete bewilderment. Yet, despite the uneven pacing and other missteps, the whodunit of it all should keep audiences interested.

Through eight often interminable episodes made available for review, “Death” has occasional moments of intrigue. But there’s way too much time dedicated to buildup.

Hulu's Death and Other Details has all the makings of a great whodunit: entitled rich people living their best lives, an outsider who has infiltrated the inner circle, the working class that hates them all, and a disgraced detective trying to make a splashy comeback. So it's disappointing that, in reality, the series never quite pops.

Overall, Death and Other Details isn't a groundbreaking murder mystery series. It does have a witty detective and a few unexpected reveals, but its lack of originality seeps through in certain narrative decisions and side character additions.

I’d have preferred five genuinely complex characters to two dozen attractive chess pieces, which is Death and Other Details in a nutshell. Maybe 75 percent homage and 25 percent revisionist, Death and Other Details consistently stands out for doing the most, but rarely stands out for doing the best.

There’s an old saying that the devil is in the details, meaning it’s the little stuff that can muck up a larger scheme. In “Death and Other Details,” by contrast, it’s the grinding nature of the whole exercise, rather than any individual aspect, that ultimately sinks a project that appears to operate on cruise control.

The writing squanders some of the energy of the performances. Imogene’s cut-through-it bluntness rarely lands any actual laughs, and multiple scenes of Rufus coaching his protégé through the art of detection are essentially nonsense.

While there are elements of Death And Other Details that have the potential to be entertaining, the show feels overstuffed and too interested in messing with the viewers to sustain what is a very complex whodunit.

Imagine a 10-hour version of “Knives Out” and you have some idea why “Death and Other Details” gets so frustrating, especially after the remarkably fun series premiere.

Could this show end up being worth it? Will the final two episodes be as engaging as the last five minutes of 108? Even if they are, it’s not worth sinking nearly eight hours into a show so deluded by its allure.