by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
In what seems to be trend in television, the newest murder mystery, Death and Other Details, floats onto Hulu as a stylish and interesting whodunit starring Mandy Patinkin and Violett Beane.
19 years before the start of the show, Imogene’s (Beane) mother was tragically killed in a car explosion which had all the signs of being foul play, but due to the lack of evidence that was able to be found, private detective Rufus Cotesworth (Patinkin) abandons the case completely. This leaves Imogene devastated, and with a harsh disdain for Cotesworth. She is then taken in by the wealthy Colliers, who had been family friends for years before Imogene’s mother’s death. It is because of the Collier family that Imogene is aboard a luxury cruise ship, because they have invited a select group of people to join them in celebrating the upcoming retirement of the CEO and patriarch of the family, Lawrence (David Marshall Grant), while the Collier’s daughter, CEO-hopeful, and Imogene’s best friend, Anna (Lauren Patten) uses this cruise to finalize a merger between them and another company run by the Chun family.
Also in attendance is Lawrence’s wife, Katherine (Jayne Atkinson); his son, Tripp (Jack Cutmore-Scott); Anna’s paranoid wife, Leila (Pardis Saremi); lawyer, Llewelyn (Jere Burns); family friend and priest, Toby (Danny Johnson) and his son, Derek (Sincere Wilbert); and Keith Trubitsky (Michael Gladys), an obnoxious businessman who Tripp invited to invest with his cryptocurrency project. After Trubitsky makes a scene at the pool, Imogene confronts him and steals his room key. After meeting several different people on the cruise, like the captain, Sunil (Rahul Kohli), and the head of security, Jules (Hugo Diego Garcia), who shows attraction to both of them, Imogene catches a glimpse of Cotesworth, who is acting as security for the Chun family and has no memory of Imogene. Using Trubitsky’s stolen room key, she goes into his room late one night while he sleeps and breaks his expensive watch.
The next morning, room service discovers Trubitsky’s dead body impaled by a harpoon against the wall. Cotesworth, being on board and dubbed “the world’s greatest detective,” is asked to investigate the death. Realizing she was caught on the security camera, Imogene uses Jules’ code to get into the security suite to erase the footage of her leaving his room the previous night before his death, but finds it had already been erased. It is then when Cotesworth confronts Imogene and reveals that he does in fact remember her, and it had been him who erased the footage of her entering Trubitsky’s room.
After she agrees to help solve the case with him, Cotesworth tests Imogene to see how she thinks the killer entered and left the room, only to reveal that Cotesworth already knew. Angered at being manipulated, Imogene quits. But as she leaves the scene, she remembers a detail from the day Cotesworth abandoned her mother’s case all those years ago: A man drove Cotesworth away from the Collier house when he quit, and it is none other than Keith Trubitsky, which helps her realize that there may be a reason she, Cotesworth, and Trubitsky’s attendance on the cruise came to be.
The pilot brings the viewer in and starts an interesting story, but the show starts to lose steam toward the second half, as it becomes a bit more convoluted. There is too much going on for it all to be believable. It wants to be a fun mystery in the way of Knives Out or the recently cancelled Apple TV+ series The Afterparty, but by adding these layers of details and trying to incorporate a second case into the mix, it lost my interest as it went on. There is also this thing that Imogene and Cotesworth do where they put themselves mentally back in time to the scenes of they’ve witnessed and cases Cotesworth has worked in the past on to try and “find clues.” While it’s a cool effect, there are some moments where it doesn’t make sense, especially for a stretch toward the season’s end.
It may sound like I am painting this as a bad series, which I am not. In many ways Death and Other Details is well executed, just not in terms of the story. The cast does a good job. Everyone has a motivation and their own story, which is great with a bigger cast like this. The series looks great, too. It’s shot and lit to look as elegant as the scenery around it, even sexy in a way, given that there is a lot of seduction that takes place.
All in all, there is a lot to enjoy here. Any fan of whodunits will find something to like, but there is unfortunately a bit of a convoluted story that I think hurts the overall experience, and makes it a bit too unbelievable. But it ultimately ends in a satisfying and fascinating way, which makes it worth taking a look at.
Rating: Low Side of Liked it
Death and Other Details is currently streaming on Hulu
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