Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano in Netflix comedy

Halfway through Netflix No good deedLydia Morgan (Lisa Kudrow), a former concert pianist now embroiled in the frenzy of trying to sell her house, reflects on a repeated heightened situation, sighing, “I’m so sad and I can’t believe that this happens again.”

I can’t believe this is happening again might have been a good title for Liz Feldmans Death to mea murky comedy about female friendship and murder that managed to take a flimsy thin premise and stretch it over three seasons by virtue of wild and sometimes illogical twists, plus the truly exceptional work of stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. It was gruelingly paced and by its series finale, it also put you through an emotional ringer. But if you had the patience for Feldman’s dogged approach, it was rewarding.

It does No good deed more appropriate title I can’t believe this is happening again too. Although it attempts a ruthlessness that does Death to me look as casual as Someone somewhere, the eight-episode series plays very much like a companion piece — one that reinforces a Liz Feldman brand, where gratuitously withheld secrets and jarringly abrupt turns are as much a part of the comedic rhythms as eye candy once was to the Three Stooges.

Like Death to me, No good deed is far too pleased with his own narrative cleverness for his own good. When everything is intended to be shocking, it is impossible for anything to be shocking.

But also gladly Death to me, No good deed uses the dramatic underpinnings of its central situation to provide juicy, emotionally varied material for a cast of actors who make the most of every predictably outrageous zig and zag. Get past the contrivances and the comedy has some insightful observations about how grief and secrets can color a relationship, plus some very sharp commentary on the sorry state of the Los Angeles real estate market.

Lydia is married to Ray Romanos Paul and they are selling their 1920’s Spanish style house in Los Feliz. The home, which served as Paul’s childhood home, was where they raised their own children, and is filled with memories both happy and very sad.

The property is listed with the exciting estate agent Greg (Matt Rogers), who dreams of a quick sale and a big commission. There’s a healthy market for it, which consists entirely of couples harboring potentially relationship-shattering secrets.

Leslie (Abbi Jacobson) and Sarah (Poppy Liu), a lawyer and a doctor respectively, are looking for a place to extend their lives together after several failed rounds of IVF. Carla (Teyonah Parris) and Dennis (OT Fagbenle) have only known each other for a year, but are suddenly married and expecting a child, and they need a place that might accommodate his devoted mother (Anna Marie Horsford’s Denise) . Ex-soap star JD (Luke Wilson) and his vivacious and desperate trophy wife Margo (Linda Cardellini) live across the street, and they’re also watching the house, although she doesn’t know how serious his career situation is, and he does. don’t know she’s having an affair.

The above is information gleaned fairly early in the premiere – no spoilers of note. To tell you what No good deed is actually about, but I have to give information away at the end of the first chapter (at the latest), so skip the next section if you want to be completely unspoilt.

The major early spoiler is that Paul and Lydia are still grief-stricken after the murder of their teenage son three years earlier. In the house. As far as the world knows, it was an unsolved crime linked to a series of recent burglaries in the neighborhood. Only Paul, Lydia and Paul’s unwell brother Mikey (Denis Leary) know otherwise. Soon – “immediately” in fact – Paul and Lydia will have to reopen the case and reopen the wounds as they and every other couple learn valuable lessons about the importance of honesty and not committing murder to a healthy relationship.

So it’s half whodunnit and half whoboughtit. I personally would have called it A Murder at Escrowbut No good deed isn’t terrible either because the show is (again like Death to me) about the ugly steps that good people are sometimes willing to take to stay alive or to get a turnkey house with a citrus garden, ornamental arches, and tossed crime scene evidence in East Los Angeles.

No good deed is both mysterious, slightly and insane – as if You are the worst, House hunters and Alfred Hitchcock had a baby. There’s sudden violence, people coming back from the dead, crazy misunderstandings, complete meltdowns, and plenty of speculation about how much polling it takes to get a murder house in this economy.

It’s all pushed forward by the aggressive musical score from Siddhartha Khosla (Only murder in the building, Elizabeth), who has made “zany mystery” his own personal brand, and following the aggressive direction of Silver Tree and (in two midseason episodes) Feldman, who prowls around the central residence as if they know every dark corner and undocumented eccentricity on the floor. level. In several trademark POV shots, they even take us into plumbing and electrical wiring.

Not all pieces are created equal. The mystery is the show’s weak link, insofar as it takes a long time to determine what actually needs to be solved. Too many of the revelations defy even rudimentary logic, and there isn’t enough effective tension to pounce on the plot holes. The resolution is unsatisfying, but not in a “maybe things will be settled in another season” kind of way. After the finale, there might be a plot thread left open, and I wouldn’t think it would be enough to justify another season. Still, Netflix isn’t calling it a “limited series,” which is what it feels like.

What is fully satisfying is the tortured strain in Paul and Lydia’s marriage and the way their distance plays out through the performances of Kudrow and Romano. Feldman had a perfect cast Death to me and once again her leaders have been expertly chosen. Kudrow and Romano have built their post-sitcom supernova careers on playing characters who have been desperate for so long that their desperation defines them.

Paul and Lydia are estranged but completely dependent on each other, and I spent much of the premiere wondering if the biggest twist would be them being ghosts haunting an estate they literally can’t leave. Instead, they’re husks of people haunting a property they can’t bear to leave, and Romano’s hangdog weariness and Kudrow’s bursting fragility are both put to good use. They need each other, but sometimes they need to hurt each other. When the two characters have it out, the TV-honed smooth, comedic professionalism of all the stars gives way to raw, exposed nerves.

Of the two, Kudrow is the standout because of how good she is with the rest of the cast. Romano has a very funny, very unlikely, very forgotten subplot with Rogers. But Kudrow gets hilarious scenes with Cardellini, who goes all the way through, and some good material with Leary, who isn’t miscast so much as his character is confusingly underwritten, and with Chloe East as the couple’s daughter.

There’s good material in the secondary storylines with each of the potential buyers, but their material amounts to a lot of little curveballs and very few big payoffs, adding more to the overall chaos than anything really jarring.

The Leslie/Sarah story comes closest to feeling like it could stand alone, as Jacobson and Liu have a nice romantic heat and they push the mystery along. Cardellini and Wilson don’t need to have chemistry, since their marriage is a disaster (and their own apartment is an expensive modernist nightmare), so they just get a good number of laughs – him with laconic Los Angeles/Hollywood satire and her with character , whose sexual desires border on predatory. While both Parris and Fagbenle are fine, neither has a character with a defined enough voice to give their relationship the nuance it needs to fit into this puzzle.

No good deed is probably easiest to enjoy between episodes three and six. The bold twists are entertainingly ridiculous, the dialogue crackles, and there’s enough unspoken angst and resignation in Kudrow and Romano’s performances to keep everything grounded.

At the closing chapters, which No good deed realizes the need to tie things together, even the characters seem to recognize the silliness.

As Wilson’s JD puts it, “Oh Lord. The revelations keep coming. And not the good kind.” I tend to agree and not in the way he meant it – although it’s impossible to be bored and hard not to be entertained along the way.