The following review of Netflix’s No Good Deed does not contain major spoilers. If you’re going to comment with a major spoiler, make sure to give a warning up top.
Secrets and lies are the fuel of plenty of television series, but few spin a web of deception nearly as well as No Good Deed.
The thriller-comedy is oriented around a house. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this house, only with the people inside it. Paul and Lydia Morgan (Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow, who make a fantastic duo here and are really playing to their strengths) are trying to sell their house three years after their son died in it (this is revealed in the first episode, so I promise I’m not spoiling anything). Or, well, Paul is trying to sell it because of the daily reminders of his dead son. Lydia doesn’t want to, because she’s convinced their dead son’s spirit is still present, communicating to her via the flickering light in his bedroom. Here are two people haunted by grief, their marriage thoroughly haunted, too.
No Good Deed opens at an open house, and the characters who filter through the house become our sprawling ensemble, all connected on a story level by the house but on a much deeper level by recurring themes of deception, manipulation, lies, and secrets. It’s a series about grief, but it’s also a series about marriage and the lies people tell supposedly to maintain those marriages that ultimately rot the foundation from the inside out. In No Good Deed, marriage is a haunted house, full of unwelcome presences. Characters lie to each other about everything from fertility to finances to affairs. And No Good Deed is equal opportunity in its depiction of marital lies; the queer characters are just as messy as the straight ones, money and class some of the main motivations that unite all these characters in their schemes. They all want the house because they see it as something better than what they currently have, and their discontent with their current statuses fuels their bad behavior. It’s wealthy suburban horror at its finest.
Abbi Jacbson and Poppy Liu play a married lesbian couple often on entirely different pages from one another, maybe even on different books. Linda Cardellini plays a trophy wife to a fledgling soap opera star (Luke Wilson) who’s banging a character named Gwen played by Kate Moennig who might as well be named Shane, because well, Moennig is playing to her strengths, too.
There’s something almost Shakespearean about the machinations of No Good Deed, characters often acting erratically and against their own interests. Whereas other series with thriller elements get off on deceiving the viewer, that’s not what’s happening here. No Good Deed twists and turns but not in trickster ways that make the viewer feel manipulated or stupid. Secrets don’t remain secrets for very long, and when characters lie to each other, we know it. As a result, it’s actually much more suspenseful and thrilling, more character study than puzzle box. It hits a lot of the same themes and beats as The Perfect Couple but does so in more coherent and compelling ways. Is it a half hour comedy with thriller elements or a thriller shrunk down to comedy length and with jokes? Trick question! Both descriptions feel too limiting for what No Good Deed really is, which is a very well crafted and acted series that defies genre prescription.
I’ve loved Feldman’s work for a long time; the lesbian sitcom she co-created with Ellen Degeneres, One Big Happy, was an underrated one-season wonder. And Dead To Me is one of the best series of the past five years, full stop. No Good Deed replicates a lot of the best parts of Dead To Me: deep storytelling about grief that also manages to be mordantly hilarious, Linda Cardellini, queer characters that don’t fit into neat boxes, a true blend of thriller and comedy genres and, it bears repeating, Linda Cardellini. But No Good Deed also isn’t just a Dead To Me redux; it’s wholly original.
It’s a great series for many reasons, but if you only need one: Kate Moennig and Linda Cardellini in bed together.
Again, if you want to comment with spoilers, make sure you make it clear at the beginning of your comment. I’m planning on doing a deeper dive into the series that will include spoilers later this week, so we can also discuss more openly there!
