We’re all drowning in content—so it’s time to highlight the best. In her column, published every Friday, critic Clarisse Loughrey recommends a new show to watch. This week: True crime podcasters comedy Only Murders in the Building.
Only Murders in the Building: Season 3
If any other show had cast Meryl Streep as a failed actor, I’d probably have accused them of resorting to cheap gimmicks. But Disney+’s Only Murders in the Building is that precious exception. It’s a series too finely crafted, tender-hearted, and humble ever to be accused of cynicism, even if its third season invites Streep—acting royalty that she is—and the ever-loveable Paul Rudd into the fray. Are all these famous people a flex? Maybe. Are they a dramatic attempt to draw in more viewers? I highly doubt it.
There’s something inexplicable about Only Murders in the Building. It’s a series about true crime podcasters living in a spectacularly luxurious New York apartment block, played by legendary comedians Steve Martin and Martin Short, plus Disney-star-turned-pop-star-turned-actor Selena Gomez, with witty, pop culture-inspired barbs that could otherwise probably be found in the pages of the New Yorker. It’s old school and a little quaint, but simultaneously peppered with millennial angst and talk of PTSD. It features both Nathan Lane and Cara Delevingne.
But it’s that intergenerational harmony that makes Only Murders in the Building feel so special. It’s the show that kids tell their parents about, and parents tell their kids about. It’s the show that people in Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats, and Twitter timelines rave about like it was their own little discovery. It’s a series that was created to be shared. It’s a show that probably didn’t need to seek out Rudd and Streep because, in all likelihood, they were fans themselves.
The former was already introduced, in last season’s finale, after Short’s Oliver Putnam was invited to direct a new stage adaptation of Death Rattle, an Agatha Christie-style yarn in which the audience is invited to suspect that a baby might be the culprit. Rudd’s Ben Glenroy was last seen as lifeless corpse on stage, with blood caked around his lips. Of course, this being the show that it is, Ben’s murder isn’t quite what it seems. Or is it? There is a murder to be investigated, and the pool of culprits has now expanded beyond the doors of the Arconia, meaning we could be pointing the finger at anyone in Oliver’s cast.
That includes Streep’s Loretta Durkin, a last-minute arrival to the Death Rattle auditions, initially described as “a little vanilla” until—surprise—the show reveals she possesses a talent equal to, well, Meryl Streep. The actor gets to play around with silly accents and faux timidity. Meanwhile, you have to wonder which Marvel co-star Rudd secretly based the spoiled and self-involved Ben on, a character best known for playing the superhero CobraBro (“Is he a Cobra? Yeah. Is he a Bro? Yeah.”).
Streep and Rudd have been granted every A-lister’s dream—to poke fun of themselves and reassure fans that the fame hasn’t gone to their heads—but Only Murders in the Building is too smart to settle for straight parody. Loretta becomes a love interest for Oliver, while Ben, in an unusual way, becomes a mentor to Gomez’s Mabel Mora. He even doles out some pretty sage advice: “You can afford to take your time Mabel. What you can’t afford is to waste it.”
At the same time, the amount of star power on display (it’s worth mentioning Broadway’s Ashley Park, recently seen in both Emily in Paris and Joy Ride, has also joined the cast), doesn’t overwhelm the central trio. Season three separates Oliver, Mabel, and Martin’s Charles-Haden Savage—frequently a bad sign on long-running shows, but here used as an opportunity to explore who these people are on their own.
With Oliver and Charles busy at the theatre, Mabel starts to feel isolated. Her friendship with these older men has, at times, been a convenient distraction from the feeling of inertia in her own life. That’s something for the millennial audience members. Oliver has a medical crisis that forces him to confront his own legacy. That’s for the older audience members. Two people work through entirely different problems that also, because of the kind of show Only Murders in the Building is, feel like shared struggles. So go ahead and text your mother, uncle, sibling, or teenage kid, and tell the good news—the show that’s easy for everyone to like is back.
