• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 20, 2025

From the land of Shonda Rhimes comes a seven-part whodunit series about a possible murder in the White House, and the challenge one super-detective faces in one of the world’s most sensitive residences.

When watching the show -- titled “The Residence” and premiering Thursday on Netflix -- it is easy to wonder whether it was filmed in the real White House. But it was not, most likely because that would be impossible.

Nevertheless, great pains were evidently taken to reproduce with persuasive accuracy the building’s famous public spaces -- basically all of them, although the Oval Office does not make an appearance in Episode One, which the TV Blog previewed on Wednesday. 

The episode took place entirely in the (fake) White House, which becomes one big crime scene when the head usher is found dead in an upstairs room while a state dinner is underway on a floor below.

You would think that the Secret Service or the FBI would take the lead position in an investigation of a suspicious death in the White House.

But it turns out that Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department has jurisdiction over any death deemed suspicious in the District of Columbia (according to the show).

And that’s why a gifted detective who works as a consultant to the MPD gets brought in by the police chief for this unusually important case.

The detective, Cordelia Cupp (played by Uzo Aduba, above photo center), is eccentric but brilliant. 

While the rest of the White House household -- Secret Service agents, an FBI agent or two and the President’s chief of staff -- go into hysterics worrying about how the news of a suspected homicide in the Executive Mansion will impact the President’s image, she focuses on her investigation by ignoring them and overriding them.

The show’s story is told in flashbacks in a Senate Committee hearing convened months later to review the events surrounding the incident.

Presiding over the hearing is none other than Al Franken, canceled comic and one-time senator from Minnesota. He plays a senator named Aaron Filkins, not Al Franken, although the initials are the same.

Also seen in the show: Giancarlo Esposito as the late head usher, Jane Curtin as the President’s crazy mother, Eliza Coupe as a Republican senator who clashes with Franken, Randall Park as a well-meaning FBI agent, Jason Lee as the President’s brother, and Bronson Pinchot as the White House pastry chef.

If not outright comedic (but close to it), the show has a lighthearted vibe in the same vein as the “Knives Out” movie series -- the first “Knives Out,” then “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and the upcoming “Wake Up Dead Man.” Like those movies, “The Residence” is a TV show that is very easy to like. 

The show is “inspired” by a non-fiction book about the White House -- The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by Kate Andersen Brower.

The show comes from ShondaLand, the production company of Shonda Rhimes, creator of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and other hits.

“The Residence” starts streaming on Thursday (March 20) on Netflix.