"Only Murders in the Building" brings back nice memories for me of watching endless reruns of "Columbo," "Murder She Wrote," and "Diagnosis Murder" in the '90s. It always struck me as a sort of character actor retirement genre, so It's a little wistful to discover that Steve Martin and Martin Short have reached this stage of their careers, but on the other hand I'm delighted that these two have found a project that is so well suited to their talents. Martin co-created the series, a comedic mystery featuring Martin, Short, and Selena Gomez as amateur detectives. The first season consists of ten half-hour episodes.
Part of the fun of "Only Murders" is that it's got a nice self-awareness to it. Our trio is composed of Charles (Martin), an actor famous for playing a TV detective, Oliver (Short), a Broadway director who hasn't had a hit in years, and Mabel (Gomez), a mysterious twenty-something. They all live at the Arconia apartment building in Manhattan, where an unfortunate young man named Tim Kono (Julian Cihi) is murdered. Oliver, Charles, and Mabel all meet by chance, and discover that they're all fans of true crime podcasts. They decide to seize the opportunity to produce their own podcast and investigate the murder themselves. Suspects include recently released convict Oscar (Aaron Dominguez), Howard (Michael Cyril Creighton), whose cat was at the scene of the crime, and music superstar Sting, who happens to live in the building. There are several other celebrities with supporting and minor roles, including Tina Fey, Nathan Lane, Jane Lynch, Jimmy Fallon, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Amy Ryan.
The episodes are short and the tone is light, so this is very easy watching. The dialogue is full of banter, with Short and Martin getting plenty of opportunity to play off each other, and Gomez's Mabel slowly seeing her unflappable cool girl persona dismantled bit by bit. The dynamic these characters have is great, as all three characters have their own little subplots to work on, but they keep getting drawn back to the bigger mystery. The pacing is very good, as the status quo keeps being unended from week to week. Mabel's got a secret past! Oliver has money troubles and unscrupulous motives! It helps that the show also keeps finding interesting ways to shake up the formula. One episode is told from the perspective of the detective assigned to the case. Another is told from the perspective of a deaf resident of the Arconia. And then the podcast's groupies get involved.
The show looks fantastic, and is full of little visual touches. There's the animated opening and ending credits sequences that look like New Yorker cover art. There are the occasional, quick fantasy sequences and cut-aways, culminating in a fantastic fake-out gag in the finale. The episode with the deaf character is almost totally spoken dialogue free. Martin and Short are still spry enough to do a fair amount of physical comedy and running around, which keeps the proceedings lively. The two comics are great, playing versions of their usual screen personals, especially Martin Short in full show business diva mode. The member of the cast I'm the most impressed with is Selena Gomez, who I haven't seen in anything in ages, and who I'm happy to report has become a lovely and appealing actress while I wasn't paying attention. While the generational divide is occasionally played for laughs, Mabel is always on equal footing with Charles and Oliver narratively, and I don't think "Only Murders" would work so well without her.
There's a bland network sitcom or network procedural version of this show that might have been made in another universe, something with a smaller budget and not nearly the amount of idiosyncratic dark humor and foul language. Whatever you want to say about the streaming wars, it's been great for content like this - a silly, satirical mystery show for a more niche audience, but one that lets its talent shine. I truly can't remember the last time I liked Steve Martin and Martin Short so much in anything, and I'm already looking forward to the next season.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment