The week in TV: The Residence; Last One Laughing; Severance

The Guardian

23-03-2025

The Residence (Netflix) Last One Laughing (Amazon Prime) Severance (Apple TV+)
A terrible thing has happened in the White House. This isn't real life, thank God. This is a delicious, funny fantasy.
Netflix's new murder-mystery comedy-drama, The Residence, begins with the president hosting a state dinner with 'Australians', a word drawn out by his entourage in a sour mixture of scorn and amusement. The big boss doesn't appear until 44 minutes in. He's unimportant. The real action is happening upstairs.
We briefly meet Giancarlo Esposito, his hair longer and greyer than when we knew him as the chicken-selling, meth-producing Breaking Bad villain Gus Fring. As the White House's head usher, AB Wynter, his poker-straight stance is officious rather than chilling for a change – and then something happens before the opening credits. We get to the crime scene in a dizzying way, cameras speeding us across the White House lawn, through doorways, hallways, stairwells, endless ornate rooms; the mood of this show at times is Wes Anderson on acid.
Inspired by a book by American journalist Kate Andersen Brower (which the Today Show called 'Downton Abbey for the White House staff'), The Residence is the latest series by US mega-production company Shondaland, which previously brought us Grey's Anatomy, How to Get Away With Murder and Bridgerton. Here, Emmy-winning Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black; Mrs America) plays birdwatching, tweedily tailored super-detective Cordelia Cupp, a long overdue 21st-century successor to David Suchet's quirky Poirot.
Binoculars around her neck, she's trying to solve a murder in a White House containing 157 suspects, and doing so in a blunt, eagle-eyed way. 'I once stayed up for 43 hours looking for a buff-coloured nightjar,' she intones. She shall not be moved.
The script, by creator Paul William Davies (For the People; Scandal), is crisp, biting and often hilarious, if at times slightly overblown, as when security detail Colin repeats his interest in Kylie Minogue, the dinner's star turn. She plays herself in a great cameo. 'I've sung Can't Get You Out of My Head seven times,' she complains. 'Seven fucking times.'
More memorable minor characters make this show zing: a sweary female chef; a calligrapher 'having issues'; the male president's first gentleman (I told you this was fantasy). Other stars from TV's past pop up, including Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) as the president's dressing gown-wearing dropout brother, and Julian McMahon (Home and Away; Nip/Tuck), who plays the Australian president (fun fact: in real life, McMahon's father, William, actually was Australia's president).
A jaunty soundtrack by the brilliant Mark Mothersbaugh, once of post-punk band Devo, feels like a character in its own right, and I whipped through two episodes in a flash. It's so nice to have some delight from DC for a change.
Less laughter is required for Amazon Prime's new comedy series. I write that with my tongue in my cheek, as Last One Laughing gets 10 comedians together in a brightly coloured, Big Brother-type set, then challenges them to keep a straight face for six hours.
Adapted from a Japanese format that's been successful elsewhere (including Ireland, in a 2024 series hosted by Graham Norton), the British version has quite the A-list ensemble, including Daisy May Cooper, Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe, Richard Ayoade and Bob Mortimer, a man whose sweet face twitches an inch and I'm hysterical.
Watched over by hosts Jimmy Carr and Roisin Conaty on many TVs ('Think of this, Roisin, as our audition for Gogglebox,' Carr hams), the first episode feels sluggish. The comics walk away from each another, stand around stony-faced, pull their jaws into grimaces. 'Not hearing laughter when you're a comedian, it's like being a shit comedian,' says Carr. That mood balloons.
When Cooper mimes a rollercoaster ride on stage, without laughter, it's like watching a weird experiment or an outtake from David Lynch's Eraserhead. Joe Wilkinson's RNLI speech works better in episode two, as do the cheeky interventions of Lou Sanders, giving the show much-needed tension and momentum. Towards the end is a sketch that had me (and one of the contestants, whose laugh the hosts bizarrely missed) in stitches. I won't spoil the surprise, but it involves Mortimer, a hula hoop, a tea towel, a handbag and an egg. A slow start, then, but warming up.
That description also fits the second season of Severance. Its final episode aired on Friday, after a discombobulating though still mesmerising 10 episodes. If you have yet to brave Severance, in short, it's centred on four characters who have consented, for different emotional or practical reasons, to undergo a procedure whereby their brain has been severed, to separate their normal (outie) life from their working (innie) one. The innies each do a baffling job for Lumon Industries, a company straight out of a dystopian novel, based in a headquarters full of exquisite, intensely eerie mid-century design.
Flung out of Lumon's strip-lit inner sanctum to the characters' wider, wilder worlds, this second season has lacked the narrative drive of its predecessor, in which Mark S (Adam Scott) slowly realised that something was dreadfully wrong. Its main purpose seems to have been providing more fodder for nightmarish, Twin Peaks-style memes destined for unpacking on Reddit threads: that haunting black corridor; the appearance of the first Lumon factory; the Mammalians Nurturable breeding ground, run by 'goat lady' Lorne (played to chilling perfection by Gwendoline Christie).
(Spoilers ahead!) Some intriguing storylines have been annoyingly sidelined, such as the influence of Mark's brother-in-law's self-help book on the Lumon employers and employees. The wonderful connection between Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken) was also dispatched far too quickly. Nevertheless, the finale remained an enjoyable head-rush, full of bloody action, as well as a great speech from Helly R (Britt Lower) in the middle of a surreal sequence featuring – very Severance, this – a marching band.
The diverging motivations of Mark's innie and outie, and a neat twist after he found Gemma/Ms Casey (Dichen Lachman), were satisfying touches too, although the ending felt mildly disappointing. Perhaps it's because I wonder how on earth Severance season three will work. Sometimes even delicious fantasy needs a little more grounding in reality.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Residence ★★★★Last One Laughing ★★★Severance ★★★★
Protection
(ITV)
Siobhan Finneran (Happy Valley; Rita, Sue and Bob Too) is as wonderfully no-nonsense as ever in this solid if grim witness protection drama.
Thames Water: Inside The Crisis
(BBC Two)
A weirdly compelling two-part plunge into one of the UK's most famously failing companies. I loved chief operating officer Esther and wastewater and bioresources director Tessa, two feisty women fully prepared to accept the shit their company was (literally) in. I didn't love how dividends and shareholders were barely mentioned.
Other Voices: Dingle, Ireland
(BBC Four)
In a tiny church, fabulous sets from CMAT, Bashy and Jacob Alon, among others, at this gorgeous international music festival, which also has an outpost in Cardigan, west Wales.