The tradition of the gentleman detective goes back nearly 200 years to the beginning of crime fiction, so there's an easy shorthand to recognize what kind of character Mandy Patinkin is playing when he makes his entrance in the first episode of Death and Other Details. Patinkin's Rufus Cotesworth is frequently referred to as the world's greatest detective, and he fits neatly into the tradition of characters like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Death and Other Details eventually delves into elements of Rufus' backstory, but one of the show's strengths is that it knowingly plays with the conventions of the detective story to draw the audience in right away.
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