No Good Deed (2024)

What we’re hoping is that the one good story out of the four in No Good Deed can carry the series’ first season, at least until the others improve. The show’s excellent ensemble deserves that kind of patience.

“No Good Deed” features such a solid setup — and such a stacked cast, led by Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow as a couple looking to sell their Los Angeles villa — that its overreliance on twists can be counterproductive. In the parlance of its central industry, once the eight-episode season settles into its story, one can appreciate the good bones beneath all the unnecessary fixtures.

While No Good Deed is no Dead to Me, its curiosity gap is tantalising enough, and there isn't a bauble in sight if you're looking for a frivolous, undemanding non-festive watch over the holidays.

It doesn’t exactly go for the subtle approach, preferring to hammer the puzzle pieces together with a clumsy fist. It may be so light as to make me wonder whether the idea or the punny title came first, but it is enjoyable, nevertheless.

There are hijinks and it has the kind of insistently plinky score that says, “This is lighthearted!” But it also wants to take grief and guilt seriously. Tonally, it’s too disjointed to nail either style or find a way for them to work together. It is also yet another movie-length premise stretched into an eight-episode series.

The violence and central mystery (which we will not spoil) fueling “No Good Deed” seem inorganic throughout. Although the show mostly delivers on its comedic promise, it never sells the “dark” aspect.

The series has the quality of being written on the whole from the outside in, its characters created to accommodate a plot, rather than plot emerging from the characters.

No Good Deed has flashes of success when it dwells on how Paul and Lydia are coping. But the show gets distracted often with brief flashbacks and meandering twists.

Piles a raft of implausible elements on top of a preposterous premise to create a condemnable edifice of bad jokes, lame mysteries, and strained performances.