As we’ve long been proclaiming on this website, we are in a Whodunnit Renaissance. Smart, clever mystery series are popping up left and right, and they are giving us the opportunity to see many delightful actors in the role of “detective.” I’m not an actor, but even I know that performers are on the lookout for roles that feel definitive and original. Creating a detective character allows an actor to make an indelible contribution to entertainment in a way that few other genres permit. How often do we acknowledge the perfection, the irreplaceibility of performers like Peter Falk as Columbo, or Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, or Tony Shalhoub as Monk? At this rate, I predict that the role for which Daniel Craig will be best known (besides James Bond, come on) is the detective Benoit Blanc.
There’s something about detectives! Put simply, they are characters like no other and everyone loves them. And we have been blessed with a flurry of new sleuths, as of late. Think Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale in Poker Face! Mandy Patinkin’s Rufus Coatsworth in Death and Other Details! So many actors are playing detectives in whodunnits and howcatchems! Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez in Only Murders in the Building! We even got Tiffany Haddish and Sam Richardson sleuthing in The Afterparty, Patricia Arquette becoming a PI in High Desert.
So, as long as everyone’s calling their agents asking to get them sleuth roles, I’d like to make a few suggestions. I’ve got some ideas for which of you actors should be in your own whodunnit.
Please note that this is not an exhaustive list. These are things I thought of that I think would be very, very great, but there are doubtlessly many more.
Okay, actors, listen up!
Matt Berry
Matt Berry kind of played a detective in The Year of the Rabbit, a Victorian comic caper series about family, but I think he should be turned loose on his own comic detective show, something like Toast of London but where he’s Britain’s greatest sleuth, despite being an idiot or a fop, or something like that.
Larry David
Look, Curb Your Enthusiasm is ending. Maybe he wants a new project. And have I got one for him! I know the trope of the irascible, cranky sleuth is a bit overdone, but no one would shock it back to life better than Larry David. He plays characters who notice details, ask questions about the little things that everyone else ignores (or is too polite to bring up), are not afraid to hound others he believes are in the wrong. Better yet, he could make it meta… it’s a show about Larry David, who, after finishing Curb Your Enthusiasm is looking for something to do and winds up becoming a detective. I’m just saying… I would watch. I think it would be pretty… pretty.. pretty good!
Paul Giamatti
I’ve sung the praises of Paul Giamatti recently and I’m about to do it again. Paul is one of our very best actors, and he has proven that he can do anything. There is no role too difficult or complex for that man. He conquers all. Can you imagine how amazing he’d be if he were set loose on a detective show? That eyebrow would go WILD.
Tony Leung
Please, please, please can we give Tony a period, neo-noir PI show where he smokes cigarettes and pensively walks around rain-slicked streets underneath glowing streetlamps? I, personally, need him to play a dapper, melancholy detective.
Mads Mikkelsen
I feel like this plea writes itself. And it’s technically cheating because he played Detective Sergeant Allan Fischer in the series Rejseholdet for four years, in Denmark. But that’s okay. He can do another one. Perhaps he’s a Danish PI transplanted to an American town for reasons we don’t really know, and he feels like an outsider, and then he stumbles on a missing person’s case.
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin
If these two followed up Grace and Frankie with a detective series about two longtime friends in their eighties who solve murders together, I would never leave the couch.
Ayo Edebiri
I, like the rest of the populace, would like to see Ayo Edebiri in everything. Every single thing. And among those many roles, I’d love it if there were a show about a college student, or maybe 20-something intern at a large company, who notices something weird and keeps digging. Maybe she pulls in her friend Kathryn Newton, idk, I’m just spitballing here. There are lots of potential avenues. And Ayo, a huge fan of David Suchet’s Poirot, would bring a certain appreciation to a project of this type, methinks.
Alan Cumming
Let’s allow his incredibly charming gig hosting The Traitors to become a prelude to his series about a gentleman sleuth who arrives in a new locale to solve a murder. Maybe he’s very old-fashioned, quaint English village-sleuth kind of guy, and he winds up solving a crime in Silicon Valley or someplace like that. I think he’d delight in a fish-out-of-water detective comedy, personally.
Jeffrey Wright
Jeffrey Wight, now Oscar-nominated, is finally, finally getting his due for an entire career of fantastic performances. He is one of our most versatile and delightful actors. Can you imagine how he’d light up a detective show, maybe about a professor who stumbles on a mystery in his university, and unravels a conspiracy that puts him in hot water with the administration?
Christopher Walken
Do I even have to explain this one?
