Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano play empty-nesters looking to downsize in the Netflix comedy “No Good Deed.” But selling their 1920s Spanish-style house in Los Angeles turns out to be more complicated than anticipated, thanks to their secrets and lies. Three couples are vying for the place and they all have problems of their own in this series from creator Liz Feldman, who previously made “Dead to Me” for Netflix.

Paul and Lydia’s home is spacious, with an arched entryway, exposed beams and a generically “nice” if indistinct sense of design. It’s unclear if this is meant as a commentary about them specifically or the more encompassing blandification of home interiors in general. He’s a contractor. She’s a former concert pianist. Together they sit in an upstairs bedroom, watching a video feed of the open house as curious buyers wander through. “They look like nice people,” he says. “Well, Ted Bundy looked nice,” she replies.

Lydia is too emotionally attached to the place to sell it. Their teenage son died there and the precise circumstances surrounding his death are unknown to everyone but the couple and Paul’s brother, a troublesome presence in their lives played by Denis Leary. “Be a shame if people found out what really happened in that house,” he warns them, menacingly.

Did I mention that “No Good Deed” is a comedy? There are hijinks and it has the kind of insistently plinky score that says “This is lighthearted!” But it also wants to take grief and guilt seriously. Tonally, it’s too disjointed to nail either style or find a way for them to work together. It is also yet another movie-length premise stretched into an eight-episode series.

The couples hoping to buy the house include an out-of-work soap actor and his opportunistic wife (Luke Wilson and Linda Cardellini), a recently married couple expecting their first child (Teyonah Parris and O-T Fagbenle) and a lesbian couple who have been struggling to conceive (Abbi Jacobson and Poppy Liu). Each relationship has stresses and strains and recriminations — things one partner is keeping from the other — but as characters, they are constructs rather than people.

Kudrow is the notable exception because she feels like a person with all kinds of conflicting emotions who is complicated and unpredictable. She’s giving a grounded performance amid wackier instincts from the rest of the cast. Her scenes fully work, but they exist in an entirely different show.

The true story about the death of Paul and Lydia’s son is revealed late in the series, and keeping it obscured for that long doesn’t serve any purpose other than prolonging the suspense. Alas, suspense isn’t enough to keep the show engaging.

Shall we talk about the real estate of it all? Because that’s invariably what catches my attention. Why do we never find out the asking price on the house? Maybe because Feldman understands, on some level, that watching apparently middle-class people wrangle over a multimillion-dollar house is not the mood of the moment, not when so many Americans are struggling. But knowing the dollar amount feels like important information about all of these people. And it would also situate the show in a specific time frame; it’s useful to see how prices change, or don’t.

In an episode of “Murder, She Wrote” from the early ’90s, the cost of a Broadway ticket is said to be $50. Prices have gone up considerably in the decades since and that detail alone makes the scene all the more interesting. “No Good Deed” sidestepping this information is the boring choice. In matters of real estate, everyone is talking numbers constantly. I wish more screenwriters embraced specificity when it comes to money because it shapes our lives, and decisions, in such definite and complex ways.

How to watch: Netflix