Hulu kills off Mandy Patinkin’s Death And Other Details
Patinkin and Violett Beane starred in the glossy mystery, which never solved the enigma of how to get people to actually watch it
Aux News Death and Other Details
Answering, pretty definitively, the question “What happens if they threw a murder and nobody came?” Hulu revealed today that it’s canceling its pulpy Mandy Patinkin mystery show Death And Other Details after a single season on the streaming airwaves. And since this news broke after 3 p.m. in Hollywood on a Friday afternoon, it’s time for our favorite recurring feature here at the A.V. Club Newswire: The Friday Night Murder Pile, where networks and streamers throw shows they want to get rid of with a minimum of fuss, and nobody asking any inconvenient questions.
In fact, “minimum of fuss” might be a good way to describe the response to Death, which failed pretty spectacularly to capitalize on its blend of Agatha Christie throwback details and Knives Out-esque depictions of death and depravity amongst the mega-rich. Patinkin and co-star Violett Beane both did their best with the material, which centered on a young woman (Beane) whose rich asshole benefactors end up at the center of a murder mystery, forcing her to reunite with the detective who failed to solve her own mother’s murder as a child. But Death was heavy on surface details—including lots of loving looks at its opulent setting and fashions—and light on real rigor, leaving audiences apparently unenthused. (Per Deadline, which reported the killing, the show never managed to crack even the generous barriers of Nielsen’s weekly streaming charts.)
Per standard FNMP protocol, Hulu didn’t bother issuing any kind of “Have a great summer!” press comment for the show, or to creators Heidi Cole McAdams and Mike Weiss, letting them know how happy they’d be to work with them again. (Also, take it as read that the question raised in the show’s final moments, i.e., “Who put all these severed limbs here?” will now never be addressed, unless Death And Other Details had a vibrant fan-fiction community nobody was bothering to tell us about.)
24 Comments
I enjoyed the show…not so much the ending. Not to spoil it for anyone but why Violet’s character would have that final relationship in that way was odd.
The show did kinda suck.
I watched it. The big problem was that there was a huge build up for such little payoff; the question is “Who is Victor Sams?”, the guy who kills the protagonist’s mother, and the answer when it comes is pretty underwhelming. In between, not a lot happens, and much of what does is really easy to see coming. But it’s reasonably well acted and it looks lovely.
Yeah, it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a murder mystery, or “The Usual Suspects”, and kinda failed at both.
And I don’t know about the “looks lovely”. The compositing on the outdoor boat scenes was just godawful.
I’ll admit I don’t know much about compositing, but I thought the costumes were pretty, as were the people wearing them.
The show looked like a Vogue magazine photoshoot, essentially. Very fashionable and gorgeous people wearing the clothes in fancy locations.
Oh hey, I forgot I wanted to watch this. Mea culpa, Mandy.
I watched half this, hopeful. The 4 episodes I watched were, well, boring. There was no sense of place, the characters weren’t interacting, and for some reason there was some background intrigue that didn’t seem interesting.Then, they solved the main issue, maybe, and shifted to that background intrigue that just didn’t seem interesting. It was the final straw, and I was out. Why not just focus on the murder at hand?
How I wish I only watched four episodes. It got worse and worse as it went on.
Same! It was awful.
My wife wanted to stop after one. That says a lot, actually. We rarely don’t finish seasons.
I couldn’t make it through the first episode. It was so glacially paced and just knowing there were nine more freaking episodes to follow just killed my willingness to stick with it. This should’ve been a feature length film.
We got through one episode of this without managing to fall asleep and I swore off it. It was just too slow and dull.
Overall I was cool with it in a laid back way, until the end when I was like how is this the relationship the protagonist and antagonist end up on. So weird.
Just a real dud of a show. Don’t know why Patinkin decided to follow the whole “famous detectives must have an overblown accent” trend, but I found it really annoying throughout. To be fair, there was far more wrong with the show than that.
He should have gone with his fake Spanish one he used in The Princess Bride.
Hulu Unfriended Me
10 episode series that could have been a two hour movie.
I liked the show, but agree it would have been better as a film.
Alternate Headline:Patinkin Ptaken Off Ptelevision
I think that would make more sense if his last name was Ptinkin.
Spoiler………..I didn’t watch it. My bad.
Good, this’ll free Mandy up to do season nine of Homeland. (I am presumably the only commenter here who wants that.)