“Wake Up Dead Man” and the Whodunnit Renaissance

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Wake Up Dead Man” and the Whodunnit Renaissance

Podcast: Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episode Date: December 11, 2025
Hosts: Nomi Frye, Vinson Cunningham, Alexandra Schwartz

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Overview

This episode examines the ongoing "whodunnit renaissance" in popular culture, sparked most recently by Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” series and the release of its third film, Wake Up, Dead Man. The hosts explore why audiences have an insatiable appetite for murder mysteries, how the genre has evolved, and what differentiates today’s whodunnits—especially the so-called “millennial whodunit”—from their classic predecessors. The conversation ranges from the origins of the format (Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes) to its current permutations on streaming platforms, with thoughtful critiques, notable examples, and cultural context.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Enduring Appeal of Whodunnits

• Cultural Moment: An explosion of interest in murder mysteries, on both streaming and in theaters. The hosts point out that “everything starts with a body nowadays” ([01:43], Nomi).
• Modern Whodunnit Boom: Highlights include “Knives Out,” “Glass Onion,” “Big Little Lies,” “White Lotus,” and a subgenre jokingly named “Nicole Kidman dealing with murder” ([02:23], Vinson).

Anatomy of a Whodunnit ([03:40]–[05:43])

• Key Features:
  • A limited, “cloistered” set of suspects—each stands to gain from the crime.
  • “Red herrings abound,” with suspicion systematically shifting among characters ([04:21], Alexandra).
  • A charismatic detective—often both observer and puzzle-solver—invites viewers/readers to play along.
  • Classic examples: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple (via Christie adaptations).

Personal Relationships to the Genre

• Vinson: Prefers whodunnits on TV or film, as they encourage “collaborative” and chatty viewing, unlike the “suspense” of literary mysteries ([05:52–06:32]).
• Nomi: Leans noir over classic whodunnit—more interested in psychology and society's corruption than puzzle-solving ([06:56–07:38]).
• Alex: Defends the whodunnit as a lens on brutishness and nastiness of humankind; cites “And Then There Were None” for its bleak view of guilt ([07:51–08:48]).

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“Wake Up Dead Man” (Knives Out 3) – Review & Analysis

Plot Setup ([09:56]–[12:59])

• Setting: A ruined Catholic parish in upstate New York led by a harsh, right-wing Monsignor Wicks. Josh O’Connor plays a former boxer-turned-priest, chief suspect in the Monsignor’s murder.
• Detective: Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) enters to solve an apparently miraculous "locked room" murder.

“How this was dressed as a miracle. It’s just a murder. And I solve murders.” – [12:33] Alexandra (in character as Benoit Blanc)

Critique of the Film’s Structure & Execution

• Economy & Elegance (or Lack Thereof):
  • Nomi found the first film “elegant and economical…a beautiful puzzle box” ([13:12]).
  • For Wake Up Dead Man, she praises cast and coziness but finds it “both too fancy with the plot and not finely drawn enough with the characters…not as satisfyingly economical as the first installment” ([13:53–15:52]).
• Overlong Plotting:
  • “It could have been two hours. Get it down, Ryan.” – [15:55] Alexandra
• Locked Room Challenge:
  • The film’s metatextual nod: “This is, as it is actually explained in the movie… the hardest type of mystery to solve. Because it’s a locked room mystery.” – [16:21] Nomi

Thematic Undertones

• On Leadership & Authority:
  • The film explores “good” and “bad” leaders: “We have the bad strong leader…Monsignor Wicks…We have the man of God…Father Judd. We have the pure intellect of Benoit Blanc…” ([14:45–15:52], Nomi).
• American Setting & Social Structures:
  • Vinson notes the dissonance of European whodunnit tropes in an American context: “The social setup that one would need…may not really exist [in upstate NY]” ([18:03–19:54]).

Notable Quotes – Film Discussion

• “This spirit really moved him today, huh? So help me, what the hell happened?” – [01:06], Alexandra (paraphrasing the movie)
• “Red herrings abound.” – [04:21], Alexandra
• “It's one of the hardest things to do…to make the plot all work.” – [15:52], Vinson

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Rian Johnson & the Whodunnit Revival

Reinventing the Genre ([22:50]–[27:12])

• Modernization:
  • Johnson updates the classic “bones” (detective, closed cast, puzzle) with:
    • Contemporary social issues: "The insertion of present day political issues and skirmishes." ([25:12], Nomi)
    • Lifestyle porn: Lavish settings and wealthy milieus ("part of the enjoyment…is the environment…a very wealthy community of power and leisure") ([25:12], Nomi).
• Self-awareness & Issue-Smuggling:
  • Johnson is “smuggling an issues movie to us in the form of whodunit” ([27:03], Alexandra)

Broader Cultural Context

• The whodunnit’s “comfort” comes from casting, archetypes, ensemble dynamics, and how they allow for ready identification—then disruption, resolution, and satisfaction ([27:35–28:55]).
• The demand for mysteries is tightly intertwined with the streaming age’s need for endless, easily-digestible, serial content ([35:04–37:01]).

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The "Millennial Whodunnit" and New Trends

Key Differences from Classics ([38:59]–[44:02])

• Meta, Ironic, and Self-Aware Tone:
  • Shows like Search Party parody millennials’ “main character syndrome”—neither the victim nor the detective, but aspiring to detective status, and bungling the process ([39:32–42:42]).
  • The idea that “the crime is a problem, it’s not a fun thing to solve” – [41:03], Alexandra
• Disillusionment & Remystification:
  • Modern mysteries, including the latest Knives Out, flirt with irrationality, faith vs. reason, and even conspiracy culture ([43:13–45:11]).
  • “A child of the Enlightenment” may not fit the genre’s mood today.
• Conspiracy & Epistemic Crisis:
  • The urge to “be the detective” reflects a society obsessed with doing “your own research” and susceptible to misinformation ([41:52–44:44]).

Notable Newer Examples

• Big Little Lies (2017) reframes whodunit as a soapy women’s drama about “wealth and the trappings of wealth” ([29:20–30:32]).
• Only Murders in the Building: A “cozy mystery if ever there was one,” with meta-commentary on true crime and podcasting ([31:07–31:51]).
• The Perfect Couple, The Resident: The lure of ensemble casts and star-powered whodunits ([32:58–35:39]).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Perennial Demand
  • “Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time…outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.” – [36:07], Alexandra
• About Genre Comfort
  • “Part of the coziness is: how comfortable do I feel with this actor? If there is really such a thing as a movie or television star, this genre is where we come to know that…” – [34:06], Vinson
• On Contemporary Paranoia
  • “We are at risk of thinking that murder happens every second everywhere. The murder saturation is so high. But they're banking on it, big.” – [38:06], Alexandra
• On Science, Reason, and the Whodunnit
  • “Things don't have to remain mysteries. And this is why I think the current atmosphere of conspiracy does sort of pull this in new ways…” – [44:25–44:44], Vinson

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Genre Origins & Structure: [03:40–05:43]
• Personal Attachments to Mysteries: [05:52–07:38]
• Wake Up Dead Man Plot & Critique: [09:56–16:13]
• Authority, Society, and Setting: [18:03–20:05]
• Rian Johnson’s Approach: [22:50–27:12]
• Rise of the “Millennial Whodunnit”: [38:59–44:02]
• Cozy Recommendations: [46:37–47:22]
  • Nomi: The Hound of the Baskervilles
  • Vinson: Encyclopedia Brown series
  • Alexandra: The film Clue (1985)

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Conclusion & Takeaway

Today's whodunnit resurgence is both an homage to and a playful subversion of its roots. As Alexandra notes, “The pleasure of this genre has to do with our ready identification… then it’s clarification, it’s resolution again. There’s a satisfaction in that” ([28:55]). Still, the current wave operates with greater irony, social commentary, and meta-awareness—and demands for comfort, serialization, and star power are as high as ever. Whether classic or millennial, the whodunnit is here to stay, forever shifting forms to meet the anxieties—and desires—of its audience.

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Listenable "Cozy Mystery" Recommendations

• Nomi Frye: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle ([46:37])
• Vinson Cunningham: Encyclopedia Brown books ([47:04])
• Alexandra Schwartz: Clue (1985 film) ([47:22])

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Summary reflects the tone, wit, and critical insight characteristic of Critics at Large—thoughtful, conversational, literate, and lightly irreverent.

Transcript

[A]

This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Nomi Frye.

[B]

I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[C]

And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello, my friends.

[B]

Hey.

[A]

Hello.

[C]

Hello. What a warm, cozy December day to discuss murder. So right now, the big, flashy new entry into the Knives out series is out in theaters. The first Knives out came out in 2019. I remember it well. I went with my parents and my husband to see it.

[A]

That's so cozy.

[C]

It was cozy. That movie was a huge success. It was one of those movies that everyone was talking about. And then Netflix wound up paying a truly incredible $465 million for the next two Knives out movies. So that's Glass Onion, which came out in 2022, and the film that's now in theaters, which is called Wake Up, Deadman. You're the only one on stage with him on Senior at the time of his killing.

You're the only one at that church who hated his guts. This spirit really moved him today, huh? So help me, what the hell happened? So, once again, there's a bit of a seasonal excitement around this movie, and it did get me thinking about murder mysteries, because this format has been going strong for a little while, and I do feel like it's hitting an absolute fever pitch. I mean, do you guys have the same feeling I do when you just turn on a streamer of choice and poke around in there to see what's on and it's just like, murder mystery. Murder mystery. Murder mystery, Murder mystery.

[A]

Yeah. It's like everything.

Starts with a body nowadays.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

This trope is just like everywhere. Whether it's like big little eyes to these Knives out movies.

[C]

Maybe the White Lotus. That's like the White Lotus.

[A]

Pretty salient.

[C]

In my mind. The White Lotus might hit.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Vincent, have you noticed this too?

[B]

Absolutely. I think White Lotus is the big one. Big little lies. The whole Nicole Kidman is kind of a big presence in this new wave. The Perfect Couple being a recent example. It's happening.

[C]

Yeah. There's a whole subgenre of this that's just Nicole Kidman dealing with murder.

[B]

Dealing with murder. Murder.

[C]

But today we're going to look at audiences seemingly insatiable hunger for murder mysteries. It's not a new thing, but it is having a moment. We will talk about the new Knives Out. I want us also to look back at the origins, specifically of the whodunit format. Back to People like the queen, Agatha Christie. And we're also looking at how this new era of mysteries is updating that classic genre. We hear a lot these days about cozy murder mysteries. I recently heard the term millennial whodunit. And, yes, people will put millennial on the front of anything, but we're going to talk about what that could mean. So that is my question. Are these new mysteries different from their predecessors? I do want to know. But one thing is for sure, the whodunit formula continues to hit. So that's today on critics at large. Why can't we get enough of.

So before we get started, the world of mysteries is vast, my friends. It is large. And I do think we should give ourselves some parameters here so that we don't completely lose our minds. Tell me, what exactly is the mystery format we're talking about today? What are some aspects that we're here to discuss?

[B]

Well, we're talking about the kind of murder mystery where there is a sort of cloistered quality to the cast of characters. There are only a few people who could have done it. And.

Each of the characters in this kind of thing stands to gain, or seemingly stands to gain something from the death of the person who has died. And therefore, this genre, kind of the way it moves, I think, is by swinging the audience's suspicion from one character to another, building sort of structures of suspicion, letting them kind of rise to a crest, and then making it kind of switch off onto somebody else.

[C]

Red herrings abound. Red herring. Anything to add?

[A]

Yeah, red herrings abound. There's usually. There's often a character of a detective, a sharp, you know, intellectual character, who treats this very human drama or even tragedy as a puzzle to be solved.

[C]

Yeah, I think the charismatic detective is a key if we're talking about whodunits. I think a real aspect of the whodunit is that it encourages the reader or the viewer or the listener. Perhaps you're an audio whodunit fan to try to play along and to try to see if you can put together clues that the creator is leaving for you along with the inevitable red herrings. I mean, I'm thinking of some very classic detective figures, like Hercule Poirot from the world of Agatha Christie, who has most recently been incarnated by Kenneth Branagh in a series of movies. And as he says in the movies, whenever people try to call him Hercules, it is Hercule.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

He's a Belgian perfectionist with a very showy mustache. Also, Ms. Marple, kind of the opposite in the Agatha Christie World, just a ordinary English woman, not a detective at all, but who has some very perceptive powers that leads her to solve a slew of crimes that always seem to be popping up.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So is this a genre that either of you has historically been into? Are you a whodunit fan? Do you not touch the stuff?

[B]

I like it televisually and maybe in cinema as well. It seems to me more of a collaborative medium in terms of viewership. Like, it's the only kind of movie that I really am fine with people talking over that I'm around because they're like, look at him. Look at that. Whatever, you know, it becomes a way of watching everybody's kind of talking, being like, this guy did that. Da, da, da. And also, just that kind of suspense doesn't accord with what I'm interested in from prose fiction. I don't know why, but interestingly, yeah, I like these kinds of TV shows, but there are lots of the classics of the genre in terms of novels that I just have not ever desired to jump into. But maybe today will change my mind.

[C]

I kind of want to send you a little packet. I'm down, like a little Christmas packet. And your birthday is coming up.

[B]

It is. That's true. Tis the season.

[A]

Here's an idea. Yeah, here's an idea. Much like Jesus. Much like, you know, Vincent was born and who did that in the month of December?

[B]

Who did that?

[A]

Who did that? Who did do that?

[B]

Who done that?

[A]

Who done it?

[B]

Nomi, are you into. Is this, like, a part of your life?

[A]

I am more of a noir girly. Sorry, I hate when people say girly, but. Which I like more than the whodunit. Because what interests me about crime is more the texture and the psychology rather than, like, hmm, the candlestick has, like, you know, the thumbprint. A thumbprint? An errant thumbprint. And could it be the secretary who. You know, I'm more interested in, like, what is wrong with these people? What is wrong with this person? What is wrong with the society that has made them corrupt or made them desperate or whatever is the case.

[C]

All right, let me just defend the whodunit for one second. No, no, no, I'm not, You know, I just want to defend the whodunit. I think these are good points. They're strong points. They're robust points.

[A]

Well, thank you. Thank you.

[C]

Well, of course, I must commend it, but I do think that some whodunits may give you a little bit of what you like. If you want to look at humankind's brutishness and their nastiness. Just take a look at a book like and Then There Were none by Agatha Christie, once upon a time, called Ten Little Indians. Thank God. That's okay.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[C]

Let's just.

[A]

It's done.

[B]

We don't like that.

[C]

We're moving on from that anyway. It's a bunch of really kind of not great people who are gathered together on an island. And at the very start, they are told by a record played by a ghostly hand. Not a ghostly hand. Each of them has committed a murder in the past. And now they are all gonna be killed.

[A]

No.

[C]

And one by one. So they are. And each of them has. It just makes me think of what you were saying, Naomi. Because each of them has committed a crime, some of them feel bad about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Most of them don't.

[A]

This is very like, I know what you did last summer.

[C]

Totally coded. Totally. Or is I know what you did last summer. And then the Renown Code. I think you'll find there's the rub. Well, I think you'll find that this is one big old archetype. So with that, let's get us to the big, splashy new entry into the whodunit genre we're talking about. Wake Up, Deadman. It's the third installment in the Knives out series. I think it's also being called at this point the Benoit Blanc Mysteries, because the Detective. The Blancaverse. It's out in select theaters now. And if it's not, you don't panic and don't kill someone. You can stream it on Netflix.

[A]

Thank God.

[C]

Soon. December 12th. It's coming right up. It's directed by Rian Johnson, who also directed the first two. Knives out created them, and it stars Daniel Craig alongside a star studded ensemble cast. I think we should say it's led by Josh o', Connor because he's basically as important as Daniel Craig in this one. Now that we've said that, whomst among us wants to give me a little brief summary and don't reveal. I won't. Okay, go for it, Vincent.

[B]

It takes place in.

A ruined, misbegotten, half abandoned Catholic parish in upstate New York. A priest having gotten into a physical scuffle with another priest because he's a former boxer who had a sort of ruinous thing happen to him during his boxing career. Now he's a priest. This is Josh o'. Connor. Now he's come to be the associate priest in this parish, which is run in authoritarian fashion by Desmont Sr. Who gives every Sunday sort of Fascistic right wing sermons. So nasty in their tone and content that new people that come to the parish always just like get up and walk out. And so this feller, Monsignor Wicks, played by Josh Brolin, he's lording over a very small flock of parishioners. The sort of remnant who, as a badge of pride, really stick around even through this person's crazy mania. It's a total cult of personality. This wretch of a person in the middle of a mass after giving his homily, is stabbed. We don't know by who. We don't even know how it's possible. It's a small room. And of course, Joss o', Connor, who hates and has expressed by now his hate for this priest and his methods and his sort of perversion of the gospel or whatever, is the chief suspect. Enter Benoit Blanc.

[C]

Who are you?

[B]

I probably should have led with this. My name is Benoit Blanc. I'm a detective.

[C]

I've taken an interest in the murder of Jefferson Wicks. You're a detective?

[B]

So you're with the police?

[C]

No, no, I work in a private capacity.

[B]

Everyone thinks I did it, I didn't do it. But in my heart maybe I didn't. And the way it happened was some kind of miracle. And I don't know, I'm lost. I don't know. Would you allow me to help you?

[A]

What?

[B]

Your lips look racked with dehydration. You haven't slept all night.

[C]

You spent it out of doors.

[B]

By the state of your pant legs on your knees in prayer.

[C]

What I see is not a guilty man in torment, but an innocent man tormented by guilt.

[B]

Let me help you.

[C]

How this was dressed as a miracle. It's just a murder. And I solved murders.

[A]

I do declare.

[B]

I do declare.

[A]

Or something. Sorry.

[B]

And then. Yeah, and then we're off to the races. We find out, you know, reason after reason after reason that each parishioner has, you know, might have reasons to have an ought with him. And then it's a fucking gallop to the finish.

[C]

Oh, yeah, it's a gallop.

[B]

It's a gallop.

[A]

It's a bit of a gallop. I mean, is it a gallop, though?

[C]

Well, is it a gallop? So let's.

[A]

That's a question.

[C]

Well, let's get into it. Was it a gallop for Yunomi? Was it more of a slog? Was it somewhere in between?

[A]

It was somewhere in between, I would say. I really love the first knives out. When it came out in 2019, I remember being Surprised by it because it seemed at that point at least, kind of an old fashioned genre. Though, of course, updated. What I liked about the first iteration and what is now this series was that it was quite economical. Like it was. It really was kind of like the classic, like there's a home and there are these several characters. You know, each of them really did have a reason to kill this patriarch. And it really was.

Unclear who had done it. But the solution to the puzzle was elegant. I remember it was elegant and I'll repeat economical. I don't know, it just. Everything. It was kind of like a beautiful puzzle box, you know. And with this one, I. It had a bunch of things to recommend it. I think Josh o' Connor is great. I like the character of Benoit Blanc, you know, I think he's a fun character. I think it does give me a kind of like cozy feeling. And I do like that in this day and age we have these characters we return to that we can kind of depend on to be a voice of reason.

[C]

Would you say that you see Benoit Blanc as a strong leader, the kind who you are always seeking?

[A]

Oh, my God, yes.

[C]

I do think that if you need a strong leader, Benoit Blanc could be your guy.

[A]

I might.

[B]

This movie's kind of about strong leaders.

[C]

It is. Totally.

[A]

It is. And I did enjoy. So I did enjoy the ultimate takeaway, which I would say we have these two. Well, we have several potential strong leaders. We have the bad strong leader, which, as you said, you know, it's Monsignor Wicks, who's like a complete madman and like a bad person. We have the man of God, the good man of God, which is the Josh o', Connor, you know, Father Judd character. We have the pure intellect of Benoit Blanc, who is another contender to the strong leader. And I did enjoy that things were put to right. I do enjoy that. I do enjoy that. I did feel like, again, I'm returning to the term economical. It wasn't as satisfyingly economical as the first installment. It was two and a half hours of kind of like both too fancy with the plot and not finely drawn enough with the characters. I mean, props. I think it's one of the hardest things to do, probably in a kind of whodunit mystery, to make it kind of like snap.

[B]

To make the plot all work.

[A]

To make the plot all work.

[C]

I'll say it if you don't want to. It could have been two hours. Get it down. Get it down. Ryan. I'm sorry.

[B]

Yeah, I usually don't like. But I agree.

[A]

I mean, it was just. It just. Which is why I asked about the gallop or the trot or whatever you said I could have used less complicated tap dancing with a plot.

[B]

Well, Rian Johnson has said that this was, like, maybe one of his hardest ones to put together. He was banging his head against the wall trying to figure out how it works as he does.

[A]

And partly, I think, and we should know this, this is, as it is actually explained in the movie in a kind of metatextual way. This is, according to Benoit Blanc, and I think this seems true, the hardest type of mystery to solve. Because it's a locked room mystery, right? Monsignor Wicks goes off into. Everybody sees him go off into the side room. You know, nobody goes into that room. Suddenly there's a clunk. And next thing we know, the man is dead. But who could have killed him?

[B]

Who could have done it?

[A]

Because he was alone in that tiny room.

[B]

And this is what Benoit Blanc says. He's like. It's like it's impossible, you know, like this. And partially because of the religious themes of the movie, a certain kind of blind faith. This may be part of the structure of the film where it's like, here is a crime that's beyond the rational. And of course, his whole worldview depends on. We can use reason to solve problems.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It sort of throws a new kind of wrench into the scenario.

[C]

So what were your feelings about the movie, Vincent, or thoughts since we're in the realm of reason?

[B]

Well, you know, I enjoyed. Listen, I'm gonna like anything or like experiencing anything with sort of like this ecclesial backdrop.

[A]

I was thinking of you when I was watching. I was like, oh, Vincent will probably understand this on that level way more than me.

[B]

I like that about it. And interestingly, you know, setting it in America is such a strange thing for this kind of film, because.

The sort of social types, the class types, and of course, like the priest, even as a sort of representative of a rival kingdom of sorts, you know, seems to me super European. I was. I was hunting down this quote as I was reading it. Henry James, in his book about Nathaniel Hawthorne, was talking about the difficulties of writing as an American. And one of the things he says is that.

Here'S the things that we don't have, that America doesn't have, these European sort of mainstays that make fiction possible. And I think this is really important for the mystery. He's like, there's no state in the European sense of the world, et cetera, et cetera. No sovereign, no court. No personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, old country houses, parsonages, et cetera, et cetera. Now, of course, as in the fullness of time, America would take on many of those characteristics. But the idea of there being places where a different kind of authority rules, a different kind of authority supersedes others. Even money, you know, a church is where all of a sudden this kind of despotic figure can take arrogate unto himself. More power than you would think in any other milieu is strange. And like, for this to be. I don't know where upstate, but, you.

[A]

Know, I know it's totally living in.

[B]

Like, Kingston, New York. I don't even know where they are.

[A]

Yeah, Like, I could see, you know, what you're saying. Vincent is making me think about, like, okay, I could see this sort of thing maybe more in, like, a megachurch. You know what I mean? Like a Joel Austin type or something.

[B]

The righteous gemstones.

[A]

Yes, Exactly. Whereas Danny McBride, I'm like, who are these people, really? Does this. What is this place?

[B]

Yeah, it seemed. That was a weird thing about it, where it's like, you know, the social setup that one would need for this to actually happen may not really exist. It may not be, like, indigenous to the setting.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But what I really liked was the Josh o' Connor character. I kind of said that he was miscast in.

The Mastermind. So let me say I think he's perfectly cast in this. He's got this sort of earnestness, but also this kind of haunted, hunted, Raskolnikov energy that just works perfectly as this. I have sinned before, and the Church is my refuge and my redemption. And therefore I have a deep point of view that puts me at odds to the reigning ideologies of the place. I just thought that was really well done.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

How are you? Well, I did inconveniently fall asleep.

[A]

And at what point do you remember it?

[C]

There's just a long middle. You know, the setup of these movies is you have to meet all the characters, and quite a cast of characters they are. I mean, we get Kerry Washington as a skeptical lawyer who becomes more and more bitter as the movie goes on. We get Andrew Scott.

[A]

He was the hot priest before Josh o' Connor was the hot priest. And then.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Takes one.

[C]

And he's very funny. And I did feel that this. And Jeremy Reiner, who become significant as an alcoholic doctor, and best of all, Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix.

[B]

She was pretty Great.

[C]

I thought she was excellent. So, yeah, there's just kind of a long middle where things seem unsolvable. And I did tune out a bit. I'd say keep it to a tight 120. Keep it to a tight 120. Get us in, get us out. Keep us in suspense.

When we are back. More on Wake Up Dead Man. Wow, this is critics at Large.

That's really good from the New Yorker.

[B]

Wow. Not bad. Really good.

[C]

Foreign.

If you enjoy bizarre true stories, then the Useless Information Podcast is the podcast for you. For example, did you know that author Robert Louis Stevenson gave his birthday away? Or that there was a football team that played for six years before someone realized that the school never ever existed? Or that a dog in upstate New York was once placed on trial for murder? Well, to hear these and hundreds of additional fascinating true stories from the Flip side history, be sure to check out the Useless Information Podcast. That's the Useless Information Podcast, podcasting worldwide since 2008 and available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now, be sure to check it out.

All right, I would like us to talk a little bit about Rian Johnson, who directed the Knives out movies, who created them, came up with them, and is being credited as this, I was gonna say Renaissancer, reviver, let's say, of this, of the whodunit genre. I did read, I don't know if you guys read, but I read our colleague Anna Russell's excellent profile of Johnson, which she wrote for the New Yorker, and it came out earlier this month. It's called Rian Johnson is an Agatha Christie for the Netflix Age. So the argument is right there. And one thing that really struck me as interesting was learning that when Johnson started making a mystery, started, decided he wanted to do a whodunit, a lot of people thought he was kind of nuts and that this was a really outdated, fusty form, that it was popular in the 70s and 80s. Of course there was Murder, She Wrote, which went on for a very long time, stuff like that. But people really thought, we're over it. Who's gonna go for this old fashioned thing? And then Knives out came along and it turned out everybody was just really eager for it. So did you guys get a sense or do you have a sense either from the profile or just from watching the movies of how Johnson is approaching the form and how it might be a bit different from the way it's been done before?

[A]

Well, I think, you know, and we've talked about this a little bit earlier, but the bones are the same. Right. We have like a limited cast of characters, a murderer and the detective character. Right. So this is like the same as like Death on the Nile or something. Right. It's like that hasn't changed. What has changed is that. And I think this might be true in general for the kind of reinvigoration of the forum in recent years, like Post Johnson even, is two things. First of all, the insertion of present day political issues and skirmishes. And the second thing, and this might be, and kind of is true of Glass Onion, the second Knives out mystery. Maybe less true of this one.

The kind of like lifestyle porn aspect of these new whodunits, if we're thinking about something like Big Little Lies or White Lotus, all of which adhere in a lot of senses to the classic format of the whodunit mystery. But part of the enjoyment of them isn't just the kind of like, puzzling out of who who is the murderer, but also the environment in which the murder and the detective work is taking place, which is usually a very wealthy community of power and leisure. And I think that is something that has helped smooth the reentry of this older form.

[B]

Yet kind of concurrent with that, it seems like he's also using it, using the form as a way to investigate not only money, but.

Manners. I guess that there's a way of Moray's manners. Even if you think about the sort of, maybe the symbolic setup of this most recent movie, it's kind of about, in a moment of fading, crumbling institutions, what is it like to lead the rump or something like that? You know, what is it like to lead an organization or something like that, in decline? And you might think of that as a quintessentially American problem of the moment, at least. I do think that there is a really earnest engagement on Johnson's part to use this as a form to sometimes, with a lot of humor, really investigate what it's like to be.

Alive right now, which I think is cool.

[C]

Yeah. Is Rian Johnson smuggling an issues movie to us in the form of whodunit? I think is a legitimate question.

[A]

Yeah, in a sense.

[C]

Yeah. I'm wondering, like, it's not the first time that issues of a social nature are brought up into murder mysteries. Of course, because these murder mysteries, part of the delight of them is their use of tropes and their use of types. And. And I am thinking about something that Ms. Marple, Agatha Christie's Ms. Marple, once said, and I quote, she's talking about.

The fact that since the Second World War, People feel a big sense in England of unease and a sense of alienation from each other. And she says you could blame the war, both the wars, or the younger generation or women going out to work or the atom bomb or. Or just the government. But what one really meant was the simple fact that one was growing old. And I love that, that everyone's feeling disoriented, everyone's feeling suspicious. Because of course, another part of the whodunit is just suspicion, the climate of suspicion. I do wonder, you know, when we think about the idea of these mysteries being comforting. I think a big part of the comfort is finding types that we recognize and maybe in this day and age, it's the kind of people we meet in a Knives at mystery. You know, thinking back to the first one, the rich grandfather, all the other characters, the kind of the failsons who gather around him, the hardworking, the hard working immigrant who keeps the household afloat, who we're obviously supposed to sympathize with. I think the pleasure of this genre has to do with our ready identification. Like, okay, this is how we're supposed to feel about this particular cast of characters and its total scrambling when the plot unfolds and gets messed up. And then it's clarification, it's resolution again. There's a satisfaction in that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

So I'm wondering if we make the argument, and I think we're on pretty solid ground here, that Knives out is part of a much broader trend of glossy new mystery stories that have turned up and have captured the attention of the viewing and reading public. When would you guys date the start of this trend? Was there a turning point when you started to notice it's all coming at Murder.

[A]

I feel like Big Little Lies coming out in 2017, which was a huge hit. I remember everybody was like, it's all anyone could talk about since then. There's been a couple of other seasons, but. And you know, was like kind of like the sort of the A list. It was like big budget, big, big stars. You know, we had like Nicole Kidman. We had Reese Witherspoon, Zoe Kravitz, Laura Dern. It was funny. It was kind of like reconfiguring the whodunit as a kind of like soapy woman's drama.

[C]

Are you new to Monterey? We just moved here a few weeks ago. I like you already. This is my new friend, Jane Chapman.

[A]

Hi, I'm Celeste. Take it.

[C]

This Jane's gonna damage. Why do you say that? We're drawn to damaged people.

[B]

You mean Celeste something Wounded about her, if you ask me.

[C]

Take your hand off.

[A]

It has a lot of issues that have to do with, like, women's problems, you know, like abusive husbands, you know, divorce, like, you know, kids, like custody. You know, just like gossip. Gossip.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I think that kind of like, reinvigorated the genre in that direction.

[C]

Yeah. And I do think, Nomi, you drew this point, you drew our attention to this point earlier. But I think it's quite valid that both of these shows are also about wealth and the trappings of wealth. And so I think you're exactly right that that's also part of the rise of this. And maybe it's even that killing off a person in this world feels perhaps satisfying in a kind of, you know, like a. What's the word I'm looking for?

[A]

Like, raging against the machine.

[C]

Kind of like a tribute.

[A]

Like eat. Literally. Well, not literally eat the rich.

[C]

They're not eating. They're not eating. But they're not killing.

[A]

But they are killing.

[C]

Yeah. I liked Big Little Lies a lot. I was really liking Only Murders in the Building, A cozy mystery if ever there was one. And another one that has those meta commentaries on because they're making a podcast about a murder. The meta commentary aspect of our own hunger for this genre. We should do our own podcast. I'm sure that every true crime podcaster wishes that he was on the case right from the start. And here we are. You know what?

[B]

I should be recording this right now.

[C]

Well, right now the only thing that matters is that there's a killer on the loose. If we're right, then he could be living somewhere in our building. Oh, that is a very good line. Badly delivered, but a good line. So do it again for me. And this is what I need. I want you to really hit killer.

[B]

You know, just killer.

[C]

There's a killer losing.

[B]

Yeah, only Murderers is a good. And so is White Lotus. These are both good to think about. The. Maybe the chief attraction, at least for me, at least of these things, is also that they're kind of about casting, which makes sense, right? If they're about types, they're also interesting about the ensemble cast as a unit. And how can I get an actor into a situation either that they are sort of absolutely made for out of central casting or something that contravenes their type of. And presents them to us in a new way? This is why, you know, Steve Martin is so good in this as this kind of like doltish but eager and well meaningful sort of well meaning, looking for love a little bit And Martin Short is this kind of megalomaniac, but benevolent. Like they're really. Their histories as actors are kind of part of the substance of. Of the show in a way that really works well. This is similar for my favorite sort of installments of this as time has gone on, because I love Nicole Kidman. I just think she's so amazingly half hinged in her presentation of herself. And I wrote about the perfect couple, which is Nicole Kidman is a famous novelist and her very rich family on Nantucket. They're reluctantly welcoming a new person into their family. They're having a wedding, and the best friend of the bride and the in law, who is already wary of this family, the best friend dies, and then it's all about, you know, who did it, whatever.

[C]

So we've been talking to my team and they feel we have to issue a statement just to mitigate any of the press. Press, yeah. So they're suggesting. I mean, it's awful. Terribly sad.

And tragic when someone feels overwhelmed to the point that they feel there's no way out.

She would never do that.

There were things she was looking forward to. Well, we never know what's going on in someone's mind, really, no matter how close you are. I'll. I'll call Marty about the statement. Right.

[A]

Did the perfect couple do it?

[B]

Well, you know, in a way, you'll find out. But part of the attraction is who's gonna be, whether they're the detective or they're one of the main suspects. Who's it gonna be and how comfortable do I feel? That's part of the coziness. It's like, how comfortable do I feel with this actor? If there is really such a thing as a movie or television star. I feel like this genre is where we really come to know that in certain cases now, though, these things are like everywhere. There's this thing called the residents.

[C]

Uzo, what is that?

[B]

It came out earlier this year. It stars Uzo Aduba, who is amazing, and Orange is the New Black and et cetera. Is this, like, totally charismatic but also kooky detective who's there to solve the White House usher has. Chief usher has been killed in the middle of a big state dinner. And she's there to figure this out.

[C]

I need to talk to everyone who had access to the third floor.

[B]

That is not going to be popular.

[C]

And everyone who had contact with. With Av Winter this evening or that he was the chief usher, everyone had contact with him. Well, it's gonna be a long night. I once stayed up for 43 hours looking for a buff collared nightjar.

[B]

It just has. It's become such a staple. And I do wonder too if it's like streaming as part of it. Cause it's just like show after show after. The manufacture of them seems to be speeding up along the lines of the sort of great conveyor belt that is streaming.

[C]

Well, I think that's a great point. I mean, look at someone like Agatha Christie. I mean, I'm just gonna open my copy of and then There Were none that I brought in. The Queen of Mystery, it says on the COVID And then. Please just listen to the first line and I'm coming back to the Netflix point. But please just listen to the first line in the. About the author Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. And outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.

[A]

Okay, that's actually crazy.

[C]

It's crazy. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Totally nuts. And so I do think there's a kind of genre issue both there and even. You can look farther back to Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I used to.

[A]

I love Sherlock Holmes.

[C]

Couldn't love them more. And speaking of another tween.

[A]

Another kind of tween moment.

[C]

Well, speaking of.

[A]

For some reason.

[C]

Yeah. Another locked door mystery. The Speckled Band, A Speckled bear.

[A]

Oh my God, that Sherlock Holmes scared me to death.

[C]

Well, the reason I'm bringing this up is because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle couldn't write these things fast enough. The public was absolutely steamed and heated. They needed more Sherlock Holmes and couldn't come up with enough of them. Tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes. And the public basically almost killed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A real murder would have taken place.

[B]

We'll kill you off.

[C]

So he brought Holmes back. And I think at that point you have explosion in literacy. You have literary magazines printing a ton of material. And by literary magazines, I mean just, you know, same thing with Dickens. The serialization of all these. Just a huge. Of all these books. A huge demand for these kinds of stories to fill people's leisure time. And I think we see the same thing now with something like Netflix. Vincent, what you're saying makes total sense to me. There is a need to put new grub on there for all of us to gobble up. And what could be better than a story that will keep people engaged, that has a natural serialized structure built in because cliffhangers trying to. False red herrings. So of course there's A demand for these things, and the demand is only going to grow. We're like a little bit risk of thinking that murder happens every second everywhere. Like, the murder saturation is so high. But they're banking on it. They're banking on it big.

What is the millennial whodunit? That's in a minute on critics at large from the New York.

Famous Amos. It's a brand synonymous with chocolate chip cookies. It's also the creation of my dad, Wally Amos. When he passed away last year, I set out to understand how he became one of the most famous black men in America and how his life and our family unraveled. From Vanity Fair, this is Tough Cookie, the Wally Famous Amos story, available wherever you get your podcasts.

We've been talking about. This new surge of murder mystery is. I get so many publicity emails a day for. I got another one recently for a cozy Christmas murder. You know, just. Just cozy up with someone else's body and have a great time. So one thing I still want to know. If we can solve this puzzle, this mystery, that would be great. Are these new mysteries actually so different from the classic ones from the Agatha Christie's, the Dorothy Sayers, the.

Chestertons, and if so, how? I do think that self awareness is part of it. Like, there's a kind of winking quality, a little bit of a meta quality. We love a side of irony, you know, I'm thinking, just for example, of the show Search party. It was five seasons long. It started on TBS in 2016. Eventually it moved to HBO. Created by Charles Rogers, Sarah Violet Bliss and Michael Showalter. And it stars Alia Shawkat, John Reynolds, John Early, Meredith Hagner, Brandon Michael Hall. It stars that group of people as a bunch of millennials. They're kind of disaffected, like they don't really know where life is going. And they get obsessed with solving the disappearance of a classmate of theirs. Do you guys remember that girl, Chantal Witherbottom? Oh, she sucked. Well, she's gone missing. What do you mean, gone missing? She's like a missing person. Well, where is she? That's. That's the question. In starting to try to solve this crime, they basically become a bunch of narcissistic fools who put themselves in the role of the detective and make infinite mistakes. They are no Benoit Blancs. Exactly. They are quite not. And then they get wrapped up in a crime quite by accident that they really can't escape from. And the crime is a problem. It's not like a fun thing to solve.

[A]

Well, they turned from being the detective to being the perpetrator, right. Over the course of the series.

First they search for this classmate who it turns out they barely knew was actually kind of like an annoying drip, is not dead and has not really disappeared, but in fact, sort of holed up. And the whole quest to find her was wrongheaded and kind of animated by these people's ennui and lack of kind of like goals.

[C]

Well, I'm just very upset by it all, you know, and it's devastating.

[B]

Yeah, for her, but not for you.

[C]

Am I not allowed to feel sad for somebody else?

[B]

Jimmy, if someone died that you didn't know, would you be sad?

[C]

Don't. That's not fair. Jimmy, please don't answer that question.

[B]

Okay, okay, look, look, you asked me.

[C]

To be honest, so I'm just gonna say this. I think you've decided that this matters to you because you have nothing else. Those people have this kind of main character syndrome. They're not the body, they're not the suspect, they're the detective. And of course, that's what all these whodunits ask us to be. They ask us to be the detectives, but they ask us to do it as leisure. When you actually take the entertainment of it into the streets and try to get to the bottom of whatever it is, you may end up trapped in a web. I mean, I think that point is probably more broadly applicable in a culture that's deeply conspiracy minded, where people all the time are, like, doing their own research, trying to get to the basis of the conspiracy and end up ensnared in a web of partially their own creation.

[A]

It becomes. The show becomes a kind of, like, treatise on, like, guilt and the inability of redemption, essentially. It's still funny. Great show. But it's taking the whodunit in a totally different direction, in a much more disillusioned direction, let's say. There is no opportunity or ability to kind of like, solve this puzzle box, you know, like, close the lid on the puzzle box.

[B]

Well, I love. I unfortunately have not seen Search Party, but what you say about disillusionment does seem to be perhaps part of what maybe we could call the distinctive character of this new crop. We've talked about the sort of flitting in and out of a rational setup in the new Knives out, and also the most recent White Lotus was kind of about religion, mysticism. You know, the idea of this is what Sherlock Holmes does. First time I ever heard this word was in connection to Sherlock Holmes. Ratiocination, like the process of finding something out by rational means, which is almost like, you know, the belief in science. It does seem like the murder mystery is, on some level, at least maybe attitudinally, a child of the Enlightenment.

[C]

Absolutely. Or really more than that, I would say a child of the post Darwin culture and climate in England, where it came to light, where if you can only put the pieces together, if you can only look at and examine it, the smallest detail together, you will get a true story. And that way, it is against faith.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

You will get a true story of how things came to be. Whether it's all life on earth or whether it's a particular murder.

[B]

Things don't have to remain mysteries. And this is why I think the current atmosphere of conspiracy does sort of pull this in new ways, because it's like on so many fronts, people are asking us to be like, that's just always gonna be a mystery, or.

That document will not become available to you. Or, you know, trust us, trust us on and on and on. And so there is a sort of almost remystification of public life. This hint of the irrational coming in, I think does have something to do with the moment and where we all stand vis a vis these, you know, Darwin, Valdera, Russo, like, whoever we think of as the Enlightenment. Are we children of that moment anymore? I don't know.

[A]

Well, look at RFK Jr. You know, look at, like, what we're going through as a country. No, but I mean, look at him. Will you look at him?

The complete kind of shoving aside of everything that we thought was like, okay, as a culture we believe in or policy is made according to vaccines, science, just like, no, no, no, no. It's like, no, that's not good. I can feel it in my bones that it's bad.

So we're gonna cancel it until we. It's like that meme. It's like, let's just stop everything until we figure out what's going on. Let's just stop science until we figure out what's going on.

[B]

Right, Right.

[C]

Yeah. I think this desire to be the hero and to follow the logical trails and take things into your own hands, it's very appealing if you do it right. It's great if you catch the right guy. And if you don't and you catch the wrong one.

The entire foundation of society crumbles. It's like citizens arrests left and right. We want a Sherlock Holmes because he's Sherlock Holmes and because he isn't you. That's kind of the whole point. All right, we got some holiday time coming up. What's the coziest mystery for you? If you want to give the people something to keep them cozy.

[A]

I don't know if this is cozy. It's more terrifying. But I did read it in childhood and I never forgot it. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Ooh, the Sherlock Holmes.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.

[C]

Really scary. Love it.

[B]

Yeah, I'm gonna throw back to childhood. I don't remember if anybody was into this as a kid, but back in my day, there was a detective named Encyclopedia Brown.

[A]

Loved Encyclopedia Brown.

[B]

He was a kid and he was solving shit.

[A]

Oh, my God, he was so.

[B]

I haven't listened to him in a while or read him in a while, but maybe I'll go back, get cozy with him. My man, E.B.

[C]

Yeah, I know you can pull off that second grade reading level.

[B]

Yeah, well, it depends on what time of the day.

[C]

Yeah. For me, it's the 1985 cinematic masterpiece Clue. You know, it's the pleasure of watching a kooky but also finely crafted little mechanism with three alternate endings. Love it. I will be watching it probably tonight.

This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Alexis Cuadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. Next week, it is our year end show. In an absolutely incredible feat, we will seamlessly unite all the cultural and political happenings of this crazy year under a single feat. Yeah, I don't know. Will we succeed? Will we fall on our faces?

[A]

Absolutely not.

[C]

Join us next week to find out.

Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood.

[B]

There's 100 wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated.

[C]

Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

From.

[A]

Prx.