We learn, in that opening Waystar Royco opera, that all six of Usher’s children have met untimely ends in the matter of a few weeks. What follows proceeds largely via flashback, as Usher laconically recounts the circumstances of each death, seated in the titular house, sipping expensive spirits with his longtime foe; after the first, each episode focuses on a different Usher before ushering them off to their own, custom Poe-style denouement. Across eight episodes, of course, the Masque of the Red Death appears, as does the Rue Morgue, the Raven, the Pit, and the Pendulum. Most of these iconic stories receive an episode’s length of attention, but, in passing, we also run into a cask of Amontillado, a corporation named Fortunato, a drug named Ligodone (after his story “Ligeia”), and dueling attorneys named C. Auguste Dupin and Arthur Pym. The Fall of the House of Usher isn’t so much based on the tales of Poe as it is a mash-up of their most recognizable parts. If you know the stories, you’ll be occasionally tickled but mostly perplexed by how strained these adaptations are; if you don’t know the stories, well, a lot of this is just going to seem weird to you.
It would qualify as an unfair spoiler to suggest how any of the children specifically meet their dooms. (And I’ll further suggest, for just this reason, that you avoid reading any of the episode titles in advance of your viewing.) But suffice it to say that the horrific heirs include a profligate party boy (Sauriyan Sapkota) desperate for his father’s approval, a ruthless spin doctor (Kate Siegel) unable to protect her father’s empire from interlopers, an affable stoner (Rahul Kohli) victim to his own immaturity, a recklessly ambitious doctor (T’Nia Miller), a recklessly ambitious lifestyle influencer (Samantha Sloyan, giving very strong Shiv Roy energy), and a straightforwardly scuzzy insecure eldest son (Henry Thomas) whose jealousy obstructs his otherwise easy path to the throne. That each of these six is summarily dispatched is no secret; it’s merely a question of which combination of Poe’s finishing moves delivers the coups de grâce.
On occasion, Flanagan can capture some of the mischievous dread of his previous work. In the series’ variation on “The Masque of the Red Death,” Flanagan traps us in a claustrophobic club orgy, turning a single rusted-out sprinkler head into a ticking time bomb. In the Succession-style pilot, the murderous rage that lies beneath that show’s sibling rivalries seeps out over the course of an extended comic dinner party. Even droll visual jokes like Usher sliding a knife through a trompe l’oeil cake in the shape of a Starbucks cup become imbued with threat and violence. A few of the set pieces recapture Flanagan’s old flair—you likely won’t forget the image of a tell-tale heart within the open chest cavity of an unfortunate corpse, still beating with the aid of state-of-the-art Fortunato medical technology—but most unfold with little surprise and little variation, like a ghost sleepily retracing its last steps over and over again.