Death and Other Details Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2 Review: Rare/Sordid
A luxury cruise tends to lose its luster when one of the passengers is harpooned. Death and Other Details Season 1 Episode 1 “Rare,” and Episode 2 “Sordid,” set sail on a complicated murder mystery.
The new series from Hulu stars Violett Beane as Imogene Scott, someone who shares a history with world-famous detective Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin). When both find themselves on the same cruise and Imogene is implicated in a murder, they must work together to find the real killer.
There is no shortage of mystery shows available on streaming nowadays, but for fans of the genre looking for another one Death and Other Details is a solid addition to the collection. Just don’t expect it to reinvent the wheel or offer anything new to the genre.
Episode 1 (written by Heidi Cole McAdams and Mike Weiss and directed by Marc Webb), lays the groundwork for the story introducing us to our sassy heroine Imogene who we quickly learn is on a 10-day cruise as a friend to the rich Collier family hosting the voyage. Although daughter and future CEO of the family business Anna Collier (Lauren Patten) treats her like a sister, Imogene still stands out as not belonging among the ultra-wealthy and Beane plays her with an edge that draws you in.
Imogene’s run-in with a particularly rude guest Keith Trubitsky (Michael Gladis), and a petty revenge plot involving sneaking into his room and destroying his watch, sets her up to be the prime suspect when he’s found murdered the next day.
Imogene’s adventure on her own may have been enough to carry a show. A murder mystery is a murder mystery, and you’ll be curious to know who is the killer.
Also helping out the series is the vibrant and seductive setting, taking place on a luxury ship designed to emulate the 1950s, and a cast full of beautiful albeit odd characters. The show is also brightly lit and shot to pick up all this richness, a nice change of pace from the dreariness that often plagues peak TV.
However, Death and Other Details offers more than just an aesthetic mystery, it offers delicious twists. It turns out Imogene’s mother was murdered with a car bomb when she was a child and the very detective who promised, and failed, to solve her mother’s murder is on the ship.
Imogene is haunted by her mother’s death, and for better or worse, detective Rufus Cotesworth is now her only chance at proving her innocence in this new murder and finding out who killed her mother. If that isn’t enough, the first episode has one more trick up its sleeve.
It also turns out Keith Trubitsky isn’t who he told the Colliers, he is Rufus’s assistant Danny posing undercover. Rufus’s whole reason for being on the ship isn’t to work security for another business magnate on the cruise as is originally suggested but to investigate the Colliers and solve the case of Imogene’s mother once and for all.
Instead of a straightforward whodunnit, it’s a mystery taking place over two timelines. Tying them together into a fascinating setup are Imogene, Rufus, and the secrets of the Collier family.
Episode 2 (written by Ryan Maldonado and Eduardo Javier Canto and directed by David Petrarca) continues the investigation as Imogene and Rufus’ partnership develops. Death and Other Details wastes no time digging into suspect interviews and setting up the potential guilt and secrets of every passenger.
The two-episode premiere will make sure you want to stick around for the rest of the voyage to find out who killed Danny and what other secrets the guests are hiding, but it’s not all smooth sailing.
The storyline is choppy at times, switching back and forth between the two timelines of the present day and Rufus’s investigation into the death of Imogene’s mother. It sprinkles in some other flashbacks of varying timelines for extra confusion.
Flashbacks become a crutch after a while and instead of letting Imogene become a developed character in the present day, the show chooses to keep focusing on her precocious child self. She’s still smart as a whip, but time has passed and it’s clear there’s more to her character if the show would spend some more time with her.
She’s an outsider, but aside from some snide comments to her on the first episode, there isn’t much exploration into the class divide happening yet in the series. Even when Rufus reveals the Colliers are hiding something related to her mother’s death, she doesn’t seem that angry at them just more curious.
Despite being played by heavyweight Pantinkin, Rufus can come off as a one-dimensional archetype of a detective on the episodes. Neither charming enough to make you like him nor repulsive enough to make you hate him, he’s just kind of there spouting axioms of detective work and guiding his protege Imogene.
His voiceover, which is revealed as him telling the story of this mystery as a proposal for his next book, is somewhat clunky in the already busy story.
Patinkin and Beane do play well together, and while their on-screen chemistry doesn’t offer the same sizzle as the other notable millennial-septuagenarian pairing Hulu offers, their scenes are still the best part of the premiere. That’s not to take away from the solid supporting cast, but we simply don’t spend enough time with them for them to dazzle.
The closest a supporting character comes to winning you over is Rahul Kohli’s ship owner Sunil Ranja, who affects romanticism as he shares with Imogene his story of leaving investment banking to recreate a 1950s sailing vessel down to the exact detail. He seems sincere enough and benefits from Kohli’s natural charm, but it’s revealed by the end that even he’s hiding something.
All to say, there’s a lot of room for the show to grow. With eight more episodes, it has plenty of space to do that alongside solving the mystery at hand.
While it might lack the quick wit of the Knives Out franchise or the acerbic class commentary of The White Lotus, Death and Other Details does offer a new puzzle you’ll be itching to solve.
What did you think of the premiere of Death and Other Details? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Death and Other Details airs Tuesdays on Hulu.
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Breeze Riley
Breeze Riley is a pop culture enthusiast who decided to turn her love of watching too much TV into a hobby writing about it. Although she's a convention-going sci-fi and fantasy nerd, she's just as likely to be watching an off-beat comedy or period drama. She is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic.