‘Death and Other Details’ Review: Hulu Stumbles With Forgettable, Generic, Overlong Whodunit

When you go to a burger stand, you want a burger. And when you watch a locked-room mystery about the “world’s greatest detective,” you want the familiar genre tropes and pleasures that come with the territory. You were in the mood for a burger, you know?

But “Death and Other Details,” from showrunners Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams (“Stumptown”), coasts on nothing but familiarity. It’s a frustrating, even cynical amalgamation of our pop culture’s current obsession with detective revivalism (“Poker Face,” “The Afterparty,” Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies) and eat-the-rich comedy thrillers (“The Menu,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Search Party”). Heck, it even throws in some tasteless ripped-from-the-headlines symbols as a kind of crass seasoning salt on the tepidly cooked meat.