- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Mar 20, 2025
Critic Reviews
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While it’s often amusing and aided mightily by a magnetic performance from star Uzo Aduba, the whodunit struggles to carve out a distinct identity in a genre that’s become increasingly crowded of late.
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She [Uzo Aduba] is a worthy addition to the TV detective ranks, but everyone else here – the writer, the director, Kylie Minogue – needs to dial it down.
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It feels like a prime example of a show that, while clever on its feet, has been bloated to a length far in excess of what's necessary. .... Still Aduba is a hoot as Cupp.
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The Residence may not be much more than an overstuffed, Shonda-fied take on the same murder mystery you’ve seen a hundred times. But Cordelia Cupp? She’s a revelation, and Netflix would be wise to realize her potential beyond this story.
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I found it both amusing and exhausting, with Aduba’s performance and the energy of the wildly overstuffed ensemble elevating a mystery that’s treated with too much frenzy to ever become emotionally involving.
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The series just generally lacks snap, panache, style, verve, or whatever you want to call it. It's the pudding without the proof, less than the sum of its parts.
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Time would’ve been better spent, however, investing in characters — or at least one character. With such a large ensemble, it’s inevitable that most parts will be one-dimensional. That’s fine. .... But why is Cordelia Cupp similarly one-note? Beyond the audience’s preexisting adoration for Uzo Aduba, there’s very little about her character to latch onto.
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It’s trying to be cleverer than its genre and more than “just” a murder mystery, as if that wouldn’t have been fun, interesting, or watchable enough. The joke—and it’s way meatier than that running Hugh Jackman one—though is that The Residence should have just stuck to the basics (and given us more Aduba).
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The result, unfortunately, is a lot less than the sum of its many, many parts. The main problem with The Residence is that there’s too much of it. Its hour-long episodes (a crime for any comedy series) are stopped dead by flashbacks and flash-forwards that turn the very act of watching into a chore while you’re forced to parse where each scene exists in the timeline.