This review is by a good friend of The Northern Myth, John “The Doctor” Dease. Doc Dease is a retired journalist who lives in Sydney.

The first thing to note about Netflix’s manor-house murder mystery The Residence is that it is completely, ridiculously — and refreshingly — off its trolley.

Which it probably needed to be, since the titular residence is at 1600 Pennsylvania Av, Washington DC, aka the White House, home in this instance to the POTUS, plus his husband, his paranoid, alcoholic mother-in-law, and his freeloading, kleptomaniac brother.

Not to mention a plethora of domestic servants, every one of whom becomes a highly likely suspect when the Chief Usher (major-domo, in Brit speak) is found dead upstairs on the night of a lavish state dinner.

That state dinner, which rapidly degenerates into a shambles, is held to appease, of all people, the Australians (yes, us) and for which the entertainment is provided by Kylie Minogue, who throws herself into the part with characteristic gusto and good sportsmanship.

At one point, after the entire party has been forced into lockdown during the upstairs murder investigation, she exclaims, “What now? I’ve already done Can’t Get You Out of My Head eight fucking times! “

The Residence veers wildly between drama and outright farce, a sort of Upstairs, Downstairs-meets-Only Murders In The Building-meets-Knives Out formula, with a big borrow from the old board game Cluedo (parts of the cinematography use cutaway, overhead shots of the White House layout echoing the Cluedo board, and numerous red herrings evince most of the murder weapons from the game).

It’s all done in a deliciously deadpan, sometimes mockumentary style, sewn together by a superb cast.

Uzo Aduba, as the bird (ie avian)-obsessed investigator — whose favoured line of interrogation is the stony, silent stare — is the obvious and outstanding star turn.

But just as good is Giancarlo (Gus Fring) Esposito as the victim who, although starting the series as a corpse, racks up considerable screen time via multiple flashback sequences that demonstrate why just about everyone had a motive to kill him. It all adds up to eight episodes of sheer delightful silliness.

If you need a mindless escape valve after Netflix’s masterful but highly confronting Adolescence, this is it!