Shondaland’s adaptation of a non-fiction book about the White House is now a “screwball whodunnit”

Thank the lord for doughnut hole’s fitting perfectly into doughnuts’ holes, which also contain doughnut holes of their own, because the great gentleman detective Benoit Blanc—along with his friend Natasha Lyonne’s Poker Face—seems to be ushering in a new era of murder mysteries. Death to true crime! Long live fictional crimes that are solved by quirky or eccentric detectives, preferably cut from the Agatha Christie mold and not the Arthur Conan Doyle mold! We have nothing against Sherlock Holmes, but he’s had his time in the sun and we’re sick of it!

Ahem. The latest project to fill the doughnut’s hole is upcoming Shondaland series The Residence, which—hilariously—was initially just announced as an adaptation of Kate Andersen Brower’s non-fiction book of the same name about living in the White House. That’s still somehow what it is, but it has since transformed into what The Hollywood Reporter describes as a “screwball whodunnit set in the upstairs, downstairs, and backstairs of the White House,” centering on the “eclectic staff” and “one wildly eccentric detective” as they try to figure out what happened during a “disastrous State Dinner.”

Imagine writing a book about literally anything, finding out that Shonda freakin’ Rhimes bought the rights as part of her huge Netflix development deal, and then watching as they turn your book into a murder mystery. Kate Andersen Brower must be over the moon, because that kicks ass. And it’s pretty funny. But also, Shondaland’s take on The Residence has a solid cast that’s led by Uzo Aduba. She’s playing Cordelia Crupp, the aforementioned detective, who is apparently “an astute observer of human behavior, with a distinctive and—to some, unsettling—conversational style.” (That sounds Holmes-y, but we’ll wait to cast judgement.)

Other stars include Andre Braugher, Susan Kelechi Watson, Ken Marino, Jason Lee, Edwina Findley, Molly Griggs, Al Mitchell, Dan Perrault, Bronson Pinchot, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Mary Wiseman. None of them are playing the president, who has yet to be cast. We also don’t know who gets murdered, but that would probably be a spoiler for this locked-room mystery (wherein the locked room is in the White House!). It’s also worth noting that, unlike Knives Out or Poker Face or most Sherlock Holmes stories, this will be an eight-episode series that presumably stretches this mystery out for the whole season… which hopefully won’t mean diffusing the tension or dragging things out excessively.