Rather like Murder On The Orient Express in a parallel universe in which Poirot misses the train.
Extraordinary to think that it's the product of the same team that brought us Dahmer. I guess they had been feeling the need to express a certain dark sense of humour that they had necessarily needed to contain in that earlier series.
There's definitely a growing trend for silly mysteries, which whilst bereft of anything resembling real tension are nevertheless enormous fun to watch. (I've been meaning to write about The Resort for a while.)
Stifler's mom is superb here. I'm so glad she will be back for S2 of The White Lotus.
It's a tradition that the deceased pet marks the transition point from unease to full-on jeopardy, usually around the midpoint of Act 2, but here we have two of them which are so fast-tracked from first appearance we barely have time to note how predictable these demises are.
If that trope has been turbo-charged, elsewhere things are a bit blurry. I do think that it is an important part of any thriller that the 'victim' has to respond to the threat in a manner that we can all identify with, taking appropriate actions at the appropriate moments and considering the situation 'in the round' from the outset. The Brannocks don't mention the G word* until long after it should have occurred to almost every viewer and only fortuitously discover the tunnel several episodes after another character suggests that one might be worth looking for in the basement.
That they can seemingly only hold one idea in their heads at a time has allowed the makers to dissect the story into seven chunks but seriously detracted from our willingness to engage emotionally and intellectually with their plight.
The home I grew up in had a dumbwaiter, though we don't call them that in the UK. I immediately dubbed the one inside 647 Boulevard 'Chekhov's dumbwaiter' yet it took until the final episode for that potential to be properly realised.
We got through all seven episodes in three days. At a slower pace we might have given up.
*Gaslighting
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