A lot of TV shows, even in this modern age where it feels like everything has to be an instant hit, take a while to find their feet, usually stumbling through trial and error in early episodes until they find a consistent level of quality. The rarest of things in TV is a show that arrives absolutely fully-formed and is a compelling watch right out of the gate. Excepting mini-series like Watchmen, the last show to have achieved that feat may have been the fantastic first season of Fargo six years ago.
However, that may have now been matched by the first season of Only Murders in the Building, a perfectly-executed show which knows exactly what type of story it wants to tell and the tone it needs to hit to get there, and simply does it.
The show combines three outstanding leading talents: American comedy god Steve Martin, his frequent collaborator and 1980s legend Martin Short (I still feel that Innerspace is underrated), and singer and actress Selena Gomez. Martin plays against type as an insular, restrained actor who had a hit cop show in the early 1990s but has never been able to replicate its success, and has trouble opening up to other people. Short's Putnam is a flamboyant theatre director who struggles with dealing with everyday practicalities. Gomez's Mabel is a young woman with her whole life ahead of her who is nevertheless troubled by things that happened ten years earlier. Each character is both an observer of the murder mystery, with ideas on how to solve it, but also to some degree a participant; Mabel used to be friends with the victim, something she is reluctant to tell her new friends about; Putnam's long-term business associate agrees to bankroll their podcast but becomes a suspect; and one of Savage's new friends attracts the ire of the killer after helping the trio explore new ideas.
Each one of the ten episodes is structured like a podcast episode, complete with a dramatic voiceover explaining what's going on and what the stakes are. Typically each episode revolves around a new suspect and the trio find reasons to discount them or keep them under suspicion. This structure and each episode's brisk pacing (the episodes are only around 30 minutes long) makes for economical storytelling, without a wasted moment or filler.
The show also manages to balance a truly impressive cast. As well as the three superstar leads and Oscar-nominee Amy Ryan in a supporting role, the show features impressive turns from Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon (as himself), Jane Lynch, Nathan Lane, and, in a near-non-sequitur tangent which is nevertheless hilarious, Sting (as himself).
The show's success hinges on its old-fashioned comedy stylings, with occasional elements of farce and theatrical storytelling, melded with the way it employs modern technology, with consideration of the technical requirements needed to make a good podcast and the way character conversations often unfold through text messages. The show even feels confident enough to engage in some experimentation: the seventh episode, The Boy from 6B, unfolds almost completely without dialogue, in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Hush, except that Only Murders in the Building even more commits to the bit (the Buffy episode had dialogue at the start and end of the episode, but Only Murders only has a single audible word). The show ably mixes the old and the new to create something that feels consistently fresh.
A good murder mystery sets up the crime, explores the life of the victim and establishes a number of suspects who could be the killer. Feature films have to contend with limited time to do all of this before having to resolve the case, but a TV show has the luxury to breathe and spend a lot of time on set-up before revealing the solution, and wondering if the audience has gotten there ahead of them. Only Murders in the Building is a very good murder mystery, with some witty writing, smart plotting and outstanding performances, let down perhaps only by the cliffhanger ending leading into the (fortunately greenlit and shooting) second season.
The first season of Murders in the Building (*****) is available now on Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ in the rest of the world.
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