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Do we love or hate Grace’s green coat? And who had foreseen this thrilling third act of Hugh Grant’s career?
These and others are important questions raised by David E. Kelley’s latest creation and HBO’s new hit miniseries, The Undoing. But they all derive from the one central thing in the drama, the one from which the whole genre from which The Undoing was born with such success takes its name: whodunnit?
Kelley’s show is the tale of the intrusion of murder into the perfect lives of heiress and therapist Grace (Nicole Kidman) and pediatric oncologist Jonathan (Grant) Fraser. When Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis) – the mother of an elite school scholar that the Fraser’s son Henry attends – is killed, Jonathan’s relationship with her is revealed and he – mostly because her boyfriend was one of his patients and subsequently lost his job when his superiors discovered the affair – he becomes the prime suspect.
First but, above all, not only. There are a variety of other plausible and well-placed options. People with motive and opportunity to kill Elena include but are not limited to: Grace, if she is faking her ignorance of the relationship; Elena’s husband, if he found out; Henry, who had suspicions, and Grace’s father, Franklin (a usually masterful Donald Sutherland), who has always hated Jonathan and is rich enough to have someone killed / framed / beaten for life on a whim. Also, why exactly is that blonde lawyer friend so involved for no immediately apparent reason, and why is she so friendly to the prosecutor?
Thus, The Undoing has hooked a nation. In fact, several nations. It amassed viewers with every episode, as those who saw the late precedents have stepped forward for the next weekly fix. It is destined to be watched by 10 million native US people, an astounding number in these cross-platform, fragmented and super competitive television times.
It was the biggest US drama launch here on Sky Atlantic, Canadian streaming service Crave’s premier watch, which has had the biggest preview figures for Australian Foxtel since 2017 (when another Kelley / Kidman collaboration , Big Little Lies, took the crown), and so much for most intermediate markets.
Perhaps even more valuable than that, it has captured the public’s imagination, gaining ground on social media and spawning countless WhatsApp groups that are the 2020-fired and socially distant equivalent of gathering around the watercooler to discuss everyone’s latest twists. . current favorite story.
Whodunnit has always been a popular form, of course, in almost any medium. Edgar Allan Poe Murder’s short story in the Rue Morgue (1841) is often cited as the inaugural written version (although The Three Apples in a Thousand and One Nights may beg to differ), unless your definition more clearly refers to Wilkie Collins Moonstone in 1868, thought of as the first detective novel.
The desire to find out who made A Thing is strong in all of us. We cannot see a problem, even a fictitious one, without wanting to pursue its resolution. What an aspiring bestselling book, blockbuster movie, or world-popular series must be able to do, as The Undoing does, is deliver enough twists to keep us interested without spinning into totally far-fetched realms and breaking them down at the right pace. . The Undoing had enough faith in its abilities here to risk sticking to what is now a risky, retro move of airing one episode a week rather than dropping them all at once and letting viewers binge watch as they please. This only works if your product is good enough to mean that the intervening seven days are filled with growing buzz rather than lost interest, and it’s a bet that has paid off here. It’s also possible that I’m not alone in feeling a strange kind of gratitude and loyalty in receiving a fixed point around which to structure my block week, especially now that Bake Off has abandoned us.
It is also certainly true that we currently need more stories of solved problems and ordered universes than ever. Just like another stereotypical episode of NCIS or Law & Order: SVU always hit the mark after a stressful day at work where no issues seemed to give in to your efforts within 45 minutes plus commercial breaks, so now The Undoing and its genre they offer a respite from the increasingly insoluble problems that surround us.
Whydunnits – dramas that dig deep into the psyche of the perpetrators and victims, have their place, but we currently don’t have the mental bandwidth for that. With a whodunnit, for one hour a week life has a narrative form, events have causes and consequences and justice will ultimately be served. Good will end happily and evil unhappily. Watch enough television and you can pretend this isn’t just the meaning of fiction.
More whodunnits TV classics
Dallas
The ur-whodunnit of television. Impossible to explain to today’s children how the Who Shot JR issue once united us all. We just didn’t know! And we had to know! And there was absolutely no way to find out, until they decided to tell us. No entry on the internet because there is no internet. No leaks because in 1980 people were able to not spoil the fun. Shots from the cliffhanger rang out in March, and the answer didn’t come until November, in an episode titled literally Who Done It. Stetsons out of it all.
Broadchurch
Who killed Danny Latimer was the question on everyone’s lips in 2013, during the unexpectedly rousing success of Chris Chibnall’s tale of the murder of a child by the sea. Slightly heartbreaking and totally addicting, just the way we like it.
All adaptations by Agatha Christie
But above all the one in which everyone has done it. No spoilers, but yes, that, for sure.
The Killing (US)
The third season. Who is killing runaway teens in Seattle? See, you’re already desperate to know, aren’t you? Such is the power of whodunnit.
Twin peaks
David Lynch’s brilliant and insane exploration of American small-town life and the murder of Laura Palmer have influenced countless dramas since then, including Veronica Mars, Riverdale, Pretty Little Liars, and anything else you feel a little bit about. too old but you would have time to watch if you haven’t fallen asleep in front of the TV every night these days.
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