'Knives Out' Meets 'Only Murders in the Building' in Netflix’s Near-Perfect Mystery Series
Giovana Gelhoren is a High-Trending Topics Writer at Collider, covering the most-talked-about stars, movies, and TV shows. Before joining Collider, she was a Digital News Writer at People Magazine and served as Associate Editor at SheKnows, where she honed her expertise in celebrity coverage and entertainment journalism.
A proud Latina from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Giovana graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Journalism and International Studies. She has interviewed countless celebrities, including Anne Hathaway, Halle Berry, Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Brenda Song, and is known for her encyclopedic knowledge of film, TV, and pop culture.
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Whether your favorite recent mystery has been one of the Knives Out movies, or one of the twisty seasons of Only Murders in the Building, everyone can agree that a good, well-developed crime mystery makes for some gripping TV. After introducing all its players, a sudden death spirals the characters into despair and/or purpose, with the leading detective (or trio of detectives) tracing every clue, talking to every suspect, and eventually uncovering the real killer. A mystery like this is certainly formulaic, but must-watch TV nonetheless.
Among the recent releases to deliver a mystery like this is Netflix's The Final Problem. The Spanish series, released on September 25, 2026, is based on the novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and delivers the perfect blend of period drama and nail-biting mystery.
What Is 'The Final Problem' About?
Much like Steve Martin's Charles-Haden Savage in Only Murders in the Building, The Final Problem centers on a semi-retired actor whose acting days are likely behind him, but he is determined to relaunch his career. In the case of The Final Problem, the protagonist is Benjamin Basil (José Coronado), an actor who rose to fame playing none other than Sherlock Holmes onscreen. The series starts off as he travels to a small island near Mallorca in the hopes of relaunching his career and instead has to step into his character's shoes when one of the guests, a quiet English tourist named Elisa Mander, is found dead. What is initially seen as a suicide quickly turns out to be something far more disturbing: a murder.
Set in the spring of 1959, the series then sees the hotel go into lockdown as a storm isolates them more than ever, and Basil begins investigating all the guests and hotel staff. Along the way, Basil relies on Adela Figueroa (María Valverde) and Foxá (Martiño Rivas), as they together search the halls of the luxurious hotel for clues, and test the composure of the hotel's manager, Mrs. Ausländer (Maribel Verdú). "In a place no one can leave and no one can reach, every guest and every member of staff becomes a suspect in a crime that grows more complex by the minute," the official description reads.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Agatha Christie Character Are You? Poirot · Marple · Ariadne Oliver · Hastings
Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you which one you are. Christie is the best selling novelist in history and she only ever needed about four kinds of person to do it, all of whom are still turning up on screen a century later.
🥚Poirot(33 novels)
🧶Miss Marple(12 novels)
🍎Ariadne Oliver(8 novels)
🎖Hastings(8 novels)
01
How tidy is your home? Pick the one that sounds most like you.
02
How would your friends describe you? Be honest.
03
How do you work out what somebody is really like? One answer only.
04
Pick a snack. No wrong answers here.
05
How do you handle a long train journey? Pick the closest answer.
06
How do you feel about being underestimated? Pick the closest answer.
07
What is your role in a group project? Think about work.
08
How would you want to be described in a book? Last one. This is the one that decides it.
The Drawing Room, After Dinner You Are…
Toni Collette and Kit Harington are shooting a new Miss Marple and 20th Century has several more Christies in development, so the drawing room is busier than it has been in decades. Here is which of them you are, and the case for yours being the best.
Hercule Poirot
Order, method, and a quiet confidence that you are the cleverest person present. Poirot is a retired Belgian police officer who solves murders by sitting still and thinking, and who is vain enough to make the reveal a performance every single time.
- You need things to be in their right place and you are not remotely sorry about it.
- David Suchet played him for twenty four years and filmed every single Poirot story Christie wrote.
- Kenneth Branagh has made three as director and star, from Orient Express in 2017 to A Haunting in Venice.
- Your flaw is that the performance of being right can get in the way of simply being helpful.
Miss Marple
People tell you things because they cannot imagine you being a threat. Marple solves murders by comparing everybody to somebody she once knew in St Mary Mead, which sounds like a joke until you notice it works every time, because human beings are not as original as they think.
- You are the quietest person in the room and you leave knowing the most.
- Joan Hickson is still the definitive television Marple, and Christie herself wrote to her hoping she would one day play the part.
- Toni Collette and Kit Harington are making a new Marple film, announced this summer.
- Your risk is that people only work out how formidable you are once it is far too late.
Ariadne Oliver
You have far too many ideas and roughly a fifth of them are excellent. Ariadne Oliver is a successful crime novelist who is sick of her famous foreign detective and keeps saying so, which is Christie writing about Christie and getting away with it completely.
- You think out loud, change your mind twice, and arrive somewhere nobody else would have found.
- She was Christie's own stand-in, right down to being tired of the detective who made her rich.
- Tina Fey played her opposite Branagh in A Haunting in Venice and gave her the comic timing the part always wanted.
- Your flaw is that fourteen ideas take as long to sort through as they do to have.
Captain Hastings
You are steady, decent and the reason the difficult genius has anybody at all. Hastings narrates the early Poirot novels, misses most of the clues, and is the only character in the books that Poirot is unambiguously fond of, which tells you what he is really for.
- You are the one who turns up, which sounds small and is not.
- Christie gave him the narrator role so readers would have somebody to be as lost as they were.
- Hugh Fraser played him across the ITV series and made him warm rather than slow, which earlier versions never managed.
- Your weakness is taking people at their word, which is lovely right up until it is not.
'The Final Problem' Is an Undeniable Hit
The Final Problem has been out for a little over a month, and it's already making waves. During its first week, the series amassed a total of 2.4 million views, with a second week increase to 3.2 million views. In addition to the massive streaming numbers, The Final Problem has also scored a flawless 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes among critics. Among the raving reviews are critics calling the series "enjoyable" and highlighting Coronado's performance as the lead. "José Coronado sparkles as the actor who made his name playing Sherlock Holmes, trying his hand at solving a classic locked-room mystery," wrote one review. "The Final Problem is a classic whodunnit, and that’s a good thing, thanks to a lavish setting and a fine lead performance from Coronado," echoed another.
With all that said, while mystery shows aren't exactly sparse on streaming these days, The Final Problem is proving its place in the genre. With a chic period setting, a full international production, and a mystery that takes viewers into the lives of Spain's crème de la crème, the series has quickly become a must-watch in the genre, in addition to a major hit for Netflix.
- Release Date
- 2026 - 2026-00-00
- Network
- Netflix
- Directors
- Félix Viscarret
- Writers
- Carlos Molinero, Alberto Macías
Cast
-
Jose Coronado
Basil
-
María Valverde
Adela Figueora
-
Martiño Rivas
Uncredited
-
Maribel Verdú
Gerard
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.