Bad news for fans of Death and Other Details: Hulu’s murder mystery series has been canceled after one season.
Despite solid production values and a talented cast that included Violett Beane and the iconic Mandy Patinkin, Death and Other Details was unable to find its audience. The cancellation comes less than a month after the season one finale hit Hulu.
The series was created by Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams, the brains behind the canceled Cobie Smulders’ series Stumptown. Death and Other Details follows world-famous detective Rufus Cotesworth (Patinkin), who bonds with highly intelligent orphan Imogene Scott over the murder of her mother. Imogene is heartbroken when Cotesworth abruptly leaves the case unsolved. Twenty years later, Cotesworth and an adult Imogene (Beane) are reunited on a luxury cruise liner, where someone has been murdered. To prove her innocence, Imogene and Cotesworth must team up to solve the crime.
The series, while stylish, struggled with an incoherent plot and tonal inconsistencies. A sprawling talented cast, featuring Lauren Patten, Rahul Kohli, Angela Zhou, Hugo Diego Garcia, Pardis Saremi, and Linda Emond, failed to establish a rhythm. Instead, the series careened from one nonsensical subplot to the next, with diminishing returns. Critics agreed, giving the series a 53% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In the wake of the success of Knives Out, many studios and streamers are trying their hand at an upper-crust murder mystery. But creating a genuinely twisty and surprising locked-room mystery is definitely a challenge. Death and Other Details joins fellow canceled Hulu series This Fool, The Great, and How I Met Your Father.
(featured image: Michael Desmond/Hulu)
