Bruce Logan: On the Beach and On the Moon

I first met Bruce Logan when he was getting married. Well, sort of. Back in 1974 I was serving as production secretary on the Roger Corman gangster romp, Big Bad Mama, which starred the odd triangle of Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt. (Yes, there were some wild and crazy sex scenes.) Part of my job was to keep track of cast and crew. So I knew it was a very big deal that Bruce Logan was our director of photography. After all, he had been a young visual effects whiz, working directly with Stanley Kubrick and SFX master Douglas Trumbull on 2001: A Space Odyssey. A self-taught animator, he began work on 2001 in 1965, at age 19,  and stayed with the project through the film’s release in 1968. That same year, he left his native England, coming to California to collaborate with Trumbull on Antonioni’s apocalyptic Zabriskie Point (1970).

 Given his classy resumé, we were all impressed that Bruce Logan was willing to work on low-budget Roger Corman fare. But there he was, fitting in nicely with our misfit crew. The last day of our three-week Big Bad Mama shoot, we threw ourselves a wrap party on the site of our final location, Malibu’s Paradise Cove. To add to the fun, we staged on the sand a mock wedding for Bruce and his girlfriend, who were apparently planning to get hitched for real in the near future. A veteran actor, Royal Dano, had played a scoundrel of a minister in the film: he was persuaded to put on his clerical robes and conduct the ceremony with great theatrical flourish. If memory serves, most of the ad hoc wedding party ended up splashing in the waves. And a good time was had by all.

 I didn’t think much about Bruce over the years, until filmmaker friends invited me to a gathering at which he was being given a lifetime achievement award. This was around 2009, and his filmography had swelled to include providing visual and optical effects for the first Star Wars film (1977) and cinematography for the ambitious sci-fi epic, Tron (1982), in which a computer hacker is abducted into a digital world. I was then working on a book that took readers back to the film year 1967, and I had a hunch that Bruce would have some opinions about that era in which both he and I were youthful film enthusiasts.  He graciously invited me to his Pacific Palisades home for what turned out to be a long, fascinating chat. He was an imposing figure: tall, with white hair and beard. His clothing was conservative, except for a beaded necklace and that heavy silver skull bracelet on his left wrist. Underneath it all, I suspect, Bruce Logan would forever be a bit of a hippie, though he no longer had the long flowing locks of his 2001 days.

 Our conversation was wide-ranging. Of course we discussed Kubrick’s prescience in making 2001, which features convincing-looking computer screens and read-outs decades before desktop computers actually existed. With the advent of the U.S. space program, new data was coming in about the lunar surface, at the very same time that Kubrick and company were deciding what their moon’s back side should look like. They thought of altering their concept to match the science, then decided that, frankly speaking, “the moon looks kind of boring.” Ultimately, they stuck by their own artistic vision, one that would prove inspiring to countless Baby Boomers.

 Bruce Logan died on April 10, 2025. I wish we could have had another long, fruitful chat.

 

 

Shooting Day for Night

Day for Night, in common movie parlance, is the process of shooting film during daylight hours but using filters to convince the audience that the scene takes place after nightfall.  Day for Night is also the English-language title of a 1973 film that was a labor of love for French cinéaste François Truffaut, who directed, co-wrote, and played a central role as, bien sûr!, a director. (The film’s original title is the term that is the French equivalent of “day for night”:  La Nuit américaine. How apt that this wholly artificial but often cost-effective process is linked to American savvy.)  

 In this film about the making of a romantic melodrama called Je vous présente Paméla (or Meet Pamela), Truffaut takes a loving look at the very essence of cinema. Films may seem to reflect life as it is lived, but in fact they are wholly dependent upon artifice. So it follows that those who make movies accept—and thrive on—unreality.  Like the fact that the pretty girl in the speeding car is—temporarily—a stuntman wearing a dress and a wig.  That’s why movie sets are (believe me, I know!) little worlds unto themselves, with emotions running wild. Offscreen romantic partnerships can change from day to day, and few in the cast and crew are on their best behavior.

 Day for Night begins with what seems like an everyday street scene somewhere in the south of France. Passersby stroll along a leafy avenue, a deliveryman makes his rounds, a woman walks her dog.  Then, cut! It all has to be done again . . .  and again. As the director and his loyal assistant try to keep things under control, the film’s stars are creating their own brand of havoc. Jean-Pierre Aumont, as the veteran actor Alexandre, keeps making mysterious trips to the local airport, little knowing that one of these jaunts will have disastrous consequences.  Fellini veteran Valentina Cortese plays Séverine, an ageing actress so worried about her fading looks and diminishing skills that she imbibes heavily, leading to an hilarious scene in which she can’t quite manage to say her lines and open the proper door. (She was ultimately Oscar-nominated for this role, and singled out by winner Ingrid Bergman as the more deserving nominee.)  

 While cast and crew await the arrival from America of leading lady Julie (Jacqueline Bisset), her film spouse Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is struggling with an on-again off-again romance with the novice script girl. (Léaud’s presence will spark a frisson of recognition from film buffs who well remember him as the fourteen-year-old Antoine Doinel at the center of Truffaut’s cinematic breakthrough, 1959’s The Four Hundred Blows.) When the oh-so-passionate Alphonse discovers his inamorata has decamped with the hunky stuntman, his agony knows no bounds. He’s determined to quit the production on the spot; in placating him, Julie inevitably puts her own new marriage at risk.

 My favorite among the minor characters may be Joëlle, the assistant director. She’s always at the director’s right hand, making smart suggestions when asked, generally taking care of business.  This doesn’t stop her, though, when out in the countryside cleaning up someone else’s mess, from stripping off her clothes and announcing to a surprised crew member that she’d enjoy a quickie.  Later, after the script girl’s sudden departure, Joëlle makes her own feelings clear. She can’t imagine leaving a production to pursue a romance. But would she quit a romance for the sake of a production? Bien sûr!  As Irving Berlin once put it, “There’s no people like show people . . . .”

Lost (and Not So Lost) Causes: “Newsies”

 When a musical called Newsies was released by Disney in 1992, it was a box office bomb. This despite the presence in the cast of a sexy Ann-Margret, an earnest Bill Pullman, an oily Robert Duvall (playing newspaper tycoon Joseph Pulitzer), and—in a bravura role—a very young and dashing Christian Bale. The story was a good one, drawn from an 1899 strike by New York City newsboys furious that the city’s newspaper publishers were trying to bolster their own profits by increasing the sum they charged these scruffy street kids for the privilege of hawking their papers. Kenny Ortega, well known for choreographing such popular films as Dirty Dancing, signed on to make his directing debut. Alan Menken, who contributed memorable tunes to Disney hits like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, came aboard to write the score.

 hat the Disney folks had in mind was a sort of nineteenth-century West Side Story, with ragtag youngsters expressing their social angst by singing and dancing through the streets of Manhattan. A good idea, perhaps, but in its execution not terribly convincing. Though the story of the strike is a real one, the production here seems clearly to belong to the backlot of a movie studio. This despite the fact that the dance moves, in particular, are thrilling, especially in a rousing number called “Seize the Day.” (I’m not sure these street urchins would know the English-language translation of the Latin “carpe diem,” but never mind.)  Perhaps this should have been a Broadway show from the beginning: when a revised version did open on the Great White Way in 2011, it ran for three years, racking up numerous nominations and awards.

 I caught Newsies on a Disney-issued DVD from 2002, courtesy of my local library. (Public libraries, as I hope everyone knows, are a great source of DVDs as well as books.). In the usual manner of DVDs issued by movie studios, the feature film I watched was preceded by enthusiastic promos for other movies that were, we were told, coming soon. What caught my attention was that each of the promos preceding Newsies was for a Disney animated feature that was a follow-up to a classic Disney hit. I was urged to see such movies as a Peter Pan sequel, Cinderella 2, and 101 Dalmatians II. Every single one of these breathlessly-hyped flicks was, I noted, apparently hand-drawn, in the traditional Disney way. No computer-generated animation here!

 Which made it seem that Disney—seven years after Pixar debuted Toy Story, the world’s first fully computer-animated feature film—was still trying to deny that the computer had changed animation forever. Clearly, this attempt at denial didn’t work. I doubt any of the sequels promoted on this DVD made the company much money. Four years later, in 2006, the Disney folks announced that they were buying Pixar, and folding it into the Disney universe, while also experimenting with ways to use computers on their own in-house projects.

 Personally, I love the look of hand-drawn animation (though I’m hardly opposed to the use of computers to simplify the animator’s job). But on the Newsies 2002 DVD, Disney seems to be stuck in the past, both in terms of technique and subject matter. The contents of the DVD imply that Disney wants to turn back the clock to a time that once was (or, perhaps, never really was). A time when animators drew by hand, and when big splashy musicals that aimed to be a cross between West Side Story and Oliver! were big hits at your local movie house. 

Simon Says: Watch Me Take on the World of Ballet in “Etoile”

I’ve always been intrigued by Simon Callow. There seems to be nothing he can’t do. In 1979 he set the theatre world abuzz with his portrayal of cocky young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. (By the time the play became an Oscar-winning film, he had aged out of the part and taken a lesser role.) He later played memorable mostly-comic roles in classic British costume dramas like A Room with a View (as the jovial Reverend Beebe), Howards End, and Shakespeare in Love. I particularly relish his unforgettable performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral, one that prompts the film’s most touching moment. Clearly a man who is intellectually restless, Callow has tried directing too, and has published biographies of such major artistic figures as Oscar Wilde, Charles Laughton, Richard Wagner, and Orson Welles. I read the first volume of his Welles book, The Road to Xanadu¸ and found it a fascinating exploration of Welles as an actor, seen through the eyes of a kindred spirit.

 But it was Callow’s first book Being an Actor (originally 1984, but recently updated), that had a small impact on my own life. When I was still in my Roger Corman years, this in-depth primer on the theatrical arts was enthusiastically recommended to me by the actor David Birney. Having read it, I couldn’t wait to meet Callow, and the opportunity presented itself when he came to L.A. to direct an obscure drama at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. He was happy to be interviewed by me, partly because he hoped for an introduction to Roger Corman. (Yes, he had a film project in mind, but ultimately Roger didn’t cotton to it.) In any case, that’s how I ended up having a sumptuous breakfast with Simon in the dining room of  L.A.’s venerable Biltmore Hotel. To my not very great surprise, this was a man who truly enjoyed good food. I think it’s fair to say he has a real appetite for life in all its forms.

 I’ve been thinking of Simon of late because I just finished watching Etoile, the Amazon Prime mini-series in which he has a central role.  It was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino, who both write and direct. As the folks responsible for Gilmore Girls and more recently The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, both know how to put together a series that blends comedy and human drama. Set in the ballet world, Etoile posits that major dance companies in Paris and New York City trade prime talents for a season, in order to goose ticket sales. Naturally there’s a lot of emotion involved, as well as some spectacular dancing. Top-billed Luke Kirby struts and frets as the artistic director of the New York Metropolitan Ballet. (He was Lenny Bruce in Mrs. Maisel.) Charlotte Gainsbourg is appealing as his beleaguered French counterpart. There are lots of storylines involving various dancers (as well as one extremely petulant but talented choreographer), but the most unforgettable is Lou de Laâge as Cheyenne Toussant, a Parisian “étoile” (prima ballerina) whose ego is as large as her talent, and whose sexual appetites are not easily satisfied. She’s a wonderful whirlwind of a character, one who seems perennially angry, though there are hints of her softer side. 

  Among all these talents lurks Simon Callow as Crispin Shamblee, a British oil baron who donates ostentatiously to both ballet companies, and expects their fealty in return. He is always popping up at the wrong moment, thoroughly enjoying his ability to make trouble for one and all. A man of many appetites indeed.

 

 

 

Two for the Show: “The Ballad of Wallis Island”

 

Every once in a while, it’s a pleasure to go to a cozy neighborhood theatre and watch an unheralded indie from somewhere far away. It helps, of course, if the actors are spot-on, the scenery is beautiful, and the message is life-affirming, though not corny. That’s how I felt after seeing The Ballad of Wallis Island, filmed on the rugged coast of Wales by a British director I know nothing about.  (His name is James Griffiths.) The story is an expanded version of a BAFTA-nominated short from way back in 2007: "The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island" I don’t know that film at all, but it obviously got enough attention that the talented Carey Mulligan signed on as female lead in the expanded film. But the real key figures are two friends who both wrote and starred in the original short version, and now fill the same roles in The Ballad of Wallis Island.

When an actor writes a leading role for himself or herself, there’s always the danger that the film will come off as a vanity project. Such is not the case here: while watching the film I had no notion that two men I’d never heard of were behind the creation of the characters they played. I only sensed that both Tom Basden and Tim Key were perfectly cast. Basden, who nicely sings and plays guitar, has the role of Herb McGwyer, a once-popular folk singer who has never gotten past the loss of his performing partner, Nell Mortimer (Mulligan).  (Think of them as the Ian and Sylvia of their day.) Herb may have once been a star, but now he’s something of a sad sack, hurting for money and feeling that the world has passed him by. He’s been invited to Wallis Island by an enthusiastic fan, Charles Heath (Key), whose adoration for the old McGwyer and Mortimer duo has no bounds. Charles—a big lottery winner—lives in solitary splendor, indulging in whims like bringing Herb to his island home for a private concert. What Herb doesn’t know right away is that Charles has also invited Nell, who arrives with her new  husband in tow. Uh oh! Everyone is mostly polite in a veddy British way, but the tension has suddenly ratcheted up to eleven.

 Basden and Key, in particular, are experts at playing off one another. The tall, lanky Basden endures all sorts of bad luck. Upon arrival at the island he falls into the ocean, drenching his luggage. His iPhone gets accidentally immersed more than once, necessitating a bowlful of rice that ends up contributing to the plot in surprising ways. And he never quite manages to take a bath without his host popping in to see how he’s doing. We never laugh at Basden’s woes, because he seems like a man who’s suffered deep disappointments. But Key, as his opposite number, is hilarious. He loves playing the cheery host to his celebrity guests, and—probably from years of living alone—has developed a stream of puns and other babble that he inflicts on anyone within earshot. (Watching him try to play a solo game of tennis is worth the price of admission.)  He’s funny and lovable and extremely aggravating, all at the same time. But it takes a while for us to appreciate how lonely he must be.

 There are a few other important characters, notably the always welcome Mulligan, who beautifully duets with Basden in a key scene. But basically The Ballad of Wallis Island is two for the show, And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

 

 

Ronald Colman: A Durable Life

The actor Ronald Colman, known for his dapper mustache and his mellifluous speaking voice, left us in 1958. But lovers of old cinema classics still remember him fondly. I recall my parents chuckling over their memories of 1947’s The Late George Apley and my mother developing a romantic fascination with Shangri-La, thanks to a hit Colman film from 1937, Lost Horizon. I’ve also come across Carol Burnett’s rambunctious take on a 1942 Colman romantic weepy, Random Harvest. (Burnett’s version, called Rancid Harvest, has heaps of fun with the story of a British ex-soldier, suffering from amnesia, who has totally forgotten his marriage to perky Greer Garson.) 

Colman’s film career, which stretched from the silent era to 1957, gave him a wide variety of roles. He was a courtly would-be lover in Lady Windermere’s Fan, a silent adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play directed back in 1925 by the great Ernst Lubitsch. He starred as a soldier, a jewel thief, a heroic doctor, an esteemed law professor, and a painter who has gone blind.  After multiple Oscar nominations, he finally took home the golden statuette in 1948 for A Double Life, in which he played a Broadway actor so caught up in his portrayal of Othello that he nearly murders his on-stage Desdemona. 

How to take in the whole scope of Colman’s illustrious career? My exceedingly prolific colleague Carl Rollyson has written a Colman biography, published in 2024, that’s both extremely thorough and unique in its focus. He has titled it Ronald Colman: Hollywood’s Gentleman Hero. Rollyson’s book contains the elements of many classic biographies: a timeline, a photo section, several useful appendices, a list of sources, and so on. But Rollyson chooses not to start with the familiar cradle-to-grave narrative. Instead, he devotes the long first section of his book to what he calls “A Gentleman’s Work.” Starting with the classic eighteenth-century delineation of gentlemanly behavior in Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison, he considers Colman’s film career as a creative working out of an English gentleman’s approach to life. Not that Colman always plays an Englishman; not that he’s wholly typecast as a wealthy aristocrat. Rollyson sees in Colman’s film roles an exploration of truly gentlemanly behavior, often featuring a character who must repent of his flaws and find true nobility within  himself. (Colman’s Sydney Carton in 1935’s A Tale of Two Cities certainly rises to the occasion as he heads toward the guillotine.) A particularly interesting section focuses on Lost Horizon, in which Colman’s role as an esteemed British statesman who becomes entranced by the promise of a life of seclusion and peace becomes, in his daughter’s words, “Ronald Colman stepping into his own image.”   

After thoroughly exploring the implications of Colman’s career, Rollyson delves deeply into the life itself, helped by input from Hollywood colleagues and from Colman’s daughter Juliet, who in 1975 probed her late father’s psyche in Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person. My favorite discovery is that Colman and his second wife, English actress Benita Hume, had a long, loving, exceedingly playful relationship, one captured in their popular radio broadcast, The Halls of Ivy (1950-52). The show briefly moved to television, but radio was their favorite medium as a couple, because in their later years it gave them more time for friends and for one another. And—who would have thought it?—the pair had a ball playing themselves as supposed next-door-neighbors of the cheap and cranky Jack Benny. He featured them frequently on his own radio broadcasts, with Benny heckling a dignified but prickly Colman, and Benita desperately striving to keep the peace. 

 

M is for Matriarch: “Greek Mothers Never Die”

With Mothers Day on the horizon, I’ve started thinking about movies in which mothers are front and center. All kinds of mothers. Noble, self-sacrificing mothers (Stella Dallas). Shrill harridans who make their kids’ lives miserable (Mommie Dearest).  In a dark comedic vain, mothers who mean well but drive their children crazy (Throw Momma from the Train).

In a special category are family films showcasing American kids who chafe against the rules and superstitions of their old-world mothers. Such films, comedies with a sharp edge, blend a scrutiny of family relationships with the humor we find in newcomers (or those remaining close to their immigrant roots) who don’t quite fit into their American surroundings. There was a time, back in the early Philip Roth era (let’s say the late 1960s) when Jewish mothers were considered comedy gold. The stereotype of the abrasive, all-consuming Jewish Mother shows up in movies made from works by such hot young novelists as Roth and Bruce Jay Friedman. See, of course, Portnoy’s Complaint (filmed in 1972 with Lee Grant in the mother role). And, in the same category, see portrayals by Shelley Winters in films like Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Over the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Of course, other ethnicities have their own humor focused on moms who refuse to let go of what they see as their duty to the families they’ve created. There’s a touch of this in the hit 1987 comedy, Moonstruck, which won Olympia Dukakis an Oscar for her portrayal of the Italian-American family matriarch. Ironically, although Dukakis came from Greek immigrant stock on both sides, she was nowhere to be seen in 2002’s huge indie hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, in which Mama was memorably played by Lainie Kazan. 

The longterm public enthusiasm surrounding My Big Fat Greek Wedding—which spawned two sequels and a 2003 sitcom—has seemed to propel Greek Americans into the ranks of funny foreigners with crazy accents and wacky beliefs. Just in time for Mothers Day, writer-director-actor Rachel Suissa gives us Greek Mothers Never Die, a well-meaning comedy that juxtaposes an epic mother/daughter clash with the kind of supernatural underpinnings that mark generations of movies like All of Me, Death Becomes Her, and (for those with long memories ) the Topper series.

 In the Topper movies and the later TV sitcom, a stuffy bank president is haunted by the ghosts of a fun-loving young couple (originally played by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant) who try to teach him to relax and enjoy life. The dead (and very Greek) mother in Greek Mothers Never Die constantly shows herself to her daughter, an aspiring singer now living on an island in Florida, to dispense maternal wisdom about life’s dangers. In Mama Despina’s mind, olive oil is the nectar of the gods, and pretty much everything else on earth (from butter to pre-marital sex) may well lead to cancer. But though she’ll never dispense with worry and warnings, Despina truly has daughter Ella’s best interests at heart. She can orchestrate a dandy makeover, and knows just which young doctor will be the right future mate for her late-blooming little girl. (A telling moment: on Ella and Nick’s first romantic night together, guess who shows up lying between them?) 

This is not the sort of movie in which traditional Greek religion occupies much of a role. The characters hardly feel a deep link to their Greek Orthodox faith. Still, there’s room for some amusing ancient Greek mythological deities (Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and so on) to comment on the romantic action. But Mama is the true deus ex machina here.

The film is released by Gravitas Ventures and is now available on AppleTV+

 

Dancing Through Life: Patrick Adiarte

Sometimes when you read an obit of a showbiz figure, you are propelled back in time to movies you truly loved in your formative years. That’s what happened to me when I read about the death of dancer Patrick Adiarte at age 81. The name itself meant nothing to me. But when I read Adiarte’s credits, I realized that he had featured roles in two of my long-ago favorite musicals, one released in 1956 and the other in 1961. Now I can still see him in my mind’s eye, adding immeasurably to movies in which, as a teenaged actor, he shone brillliantly.

Born in the Philippines, Adiarte inherited his mother’s gift for dance. The two of them performed together on Broadway in The King and I (in which they were supposed to be Thai) as well as Flower Drum Song (where they portrayed Chinese Americans). (All Asian-American performers know that, while there aren’t many stage or screen roles specifically intended for those of their ethnicity, they are allowed by custom to slip into any part requiring an “exotic” look.)

Though young Patrick was a well-trained dancer, his role in the stage and screen version of The King and I hardly required him to bust out the dance moves. He played Prince Chulalongkorn, the King’s number one son and potential heir to the throne. What I remember from the screen version of this role is the tremendous dignity with which he conveyed his royal status. Just by noticing the shoulders-back chest-up  manner in which he stood and walked. I grasped that this young prince was determined to serve his people to the very best of his ability, whenever it was his fate to assume the throne. Those who love The King and I will remember the important role Prince  Chulalongkorn plays at the story’s end, while his father (Yul Brynner) is languishing on his deathbed and it falls to this young boy—in a moment of intense grief—to take command. 

Flower Drum Song provided Adiarte with quite a different role. In this romantic story set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the older brother (James Shigeta in the movie) is caught between his yen for a sexy nightclub dancer (Nancy Kwan) and his growing appreciation for the picture-bride who has been imported for him from the Old Country (Miyoshi Umeki). Adiarte’s role was that of Shigeta’s impish brother, Wang San. Too young to be concerned about the prospect of an arranged marriage, he’s an All-American scamp, outraging the tradition-minded older family members and generally having boyish fun. Throughout most of the film, I recall him decked out in a Little League baseball uniform. In Flower Drum Song Adiarte gets full opportunity to sing and dance (notably in a comic number called “The Other Generation”), and he makes the most of it. 

Adiarte was featured in five movies in all, and made many TV appearances, most of them capitalizing on his “exotic” appearance. He played a Middle Eastern prince in the comic film, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, a Native American on Bonanza, and an islander on Hawaii Five-O  His best TV role was as a Korean, Ho-Jon, on seven episodes of M*A*S*H. He must have especially enjoyed his guest appearance on a Gene Kelly TV special, one that occurred around the time of Flower Drum Song. There’s no ethnic cuteness here, just some bravura tap-dancing alongside Kelly. Am I allowed to say it? I think Pat outshines the master. 

When he was no longer young and cute, Adiarte retired from performing, going on to teach dance.. Surely a life well lived. 

Dedicated to my fellow dance enthusiast, Barbara Trainin Blank. 

 

“The Residence”: A House is Not a Home

It’s a classic location for a murder mystery: the grand old house that perhaps has seen better days. What can be grander and older than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the home of every U.S. president since John Adams? And, at this time of political turmoil and stark predictions of disaster, it’s easy indeed to imagine something going very wrong in the east wing, where visitors come and go, and unlikely cronies of those in power take up residence for the long haul.

Not that Shonda Rimes’ eight-part miniseries, The Residence, pretends that it’s talking about what’s actually going on in today’s Washington. Political parties are never mentioned, and the President is contending with such in-house challenges as  a scruffy kleptomaniac brother, an acerbic and hard-drinking mother-in-law, and a same-sex husband whom no one seems to respect. A major terrorist attack the previous March has left everyone on edge, but life continues thanks to a well-trained staff (waiters, housekeepers, maintenance workers, gardeners, chefs) presided over by a formidable Chief Usher . . . . until all hell breaks loose. 

That first episode, in which the murder is discovered midway through a state dinner with the Australian diplomatic corps, is whimsically titled “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Fans of old murder mystery flicks will be amused at how each episode borrows the title of an appropriate classic, like Knives Out, The Last of Sheila, or The Trouble with Harry. Climactic episodes 7 and 8 initially struck me as oddly named: who ever heard of a movie called The Adventures of the Engineer’s Thumb or The Mystery of the Yellow Room? It turns out, though, that these are old prose works (one written in French and one featuring Sherlock Holmes) that were indeed put on film many decades ago.  

The tone of the series—witty but dark, with enough genuine emotion to keep us interested—is set by the detective brought in to solve the case. No, not Sherlock Holmes, but someone equally eccentric, and a lot more lovable.  Uzo Aduba, late of Orange is the New Black, is Cordelia Cupp, a solid presence, no-nonsense but not without empathy. She excels at detective work, but her real passion is for birding, and she somehow manages to make the two activities seem compatible, with the one helpfully informing upon the other. Her unflappability is highly useful in these circumstances, given the hysteria going on all around her. She’s matched with a young FBI sidekick (Randall Park) who at first regards her with suspicion, but their evolving relationship is such that there’s hope they’ll be re-matched in future adventures.

There are, of course, lots of other interesting folks along for the ride, including a loud-mouthed member of the wait staff, a  prickly pastry chef, the president’s manic social secretary, and a staff engineer who’s sweetly protective of one of the housemaids. They all bear grudges against the victim, but the whodunit revelation in episode eight is well staged, taking advantage of the complicated architecture of the White House’s upstairs floors for one startling revelation. 

Australian songstress Kylie Minogue has a small but key role, and the script enjoys poking fun at fellow Aussie Hugh Jackson, who is mentioned in every episode but never quite seen on camera. I should also mention the closing dedication to Andre Braugher, who was cast, back in 2022 in the central role of Chief Usher A. B. Wynter, but died midway through the shoot. The Residence is dedicated to his memory, and his role is more than ably filled by Giancarlo Esposito, as a man you love to hate.