Steve Martin stars as an actor whose last successful TV show was a decade ago. Martin Short plays a Broadway director whose career is stalled and he’s running out of money, and Selena Gomez is a mysterious young woman who knows more than she’s telling. All three characters are bound together by their love of true-crime podcasts. And, when the body of a man is found in their hotel, The Arconia, the three unlikely investigators decide to work together to find the murderer.
HULU released three of the 10 episodes in the Only Murders in the Building series this week. One of the new episodes will be released each Tuesday until the finale on October 19.
It’s a little early to judge the series, but so far Diane and I are enjoying it. It’s a little silly, but that’s not so bad for the terrible times we’re living through. GRADE: Incomplete
Excellent choice of grade! I will give nearly any Short project a try…
Todd, the start of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING is promising, but I can’t make a valid judgment on only 3 of 10 episodes.
Another friend watched the first episode and hated it. She said every sentence had “F—” in it and it bothered her. No Hulu here, so no review.
Jeff, maybe I’m just numb to four-letter words in movies and TV these days. When Martin or Short use the F-word in ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, it’s usually for comic effect.
Anything with Martin and Short is a must, and I’ll definitely watch it when the whole thing is available. This policy of dribbling a series out there one episode per week is an unfortunate trend that Hulu has latched onto, and I wish they’d get over it. It’s like watching something on NBC in the Seventies, and fails to take advantage of one of the primary pleasures of watching something on a streaming service.
Michael, I agree on the dribbling strategy. Netflix showed that people like to binge, but HULU and other streaming services are ignoring that. Congratulations on Georgia defeating Clemson!
I noticed that Britbox put out the first two episodes of MIDSOMER MURDERS season 22 in the Spring, but the other four won’t be until later this year. This past weekend they did the same with VERA series 11. Even though those are each separate stories, it is still preferable to drop the whole series at once.
Jeff, I agree. Once I get on a roll with a TV program, I want to watch it RIGHT NOW!
The pacing on most newer shows is not conducive to streaming, I find. And if it’s at all complicated (like some of the ones on HBO) it’s hard to remember what happened. I guess waiting until the end and then watching the entire series over a couple of days is best. Yet I rarely do that.
I found it moderately entertaining.
Patti, that is Jackie’s complaint too – she forgot what happened on the previous episode. Sometimes I do try and wait until the whole series is out, but then sometimes it turns out that we don’t like it and delete everything after one episode (as in the recent THE BEAST MUST DIE). So ideally, I would record (or wait for) three or four episodes, then try one to see if it appeals to us. We have watched the first two episodes of Laetitia on HBO. I think more than one at a time would be excessive. Same definitely goes for THE DEFEATED on Netflix. Too dark to watch more than one at a time.
Jeff, I agree with Patti and Jackie on complicated plotting in some of these series. It is hard to remember tiny details week after week. Michael’s strategy of waiting until all the episodes are available to watch makes a lot of sense.
Patti, I agree with your “moderately entertaining” assessment. Too soon to determine if this series will gain a large enough audience for a Second Season.
What seems desirable to me is to let us watch the thing at our own pace. Just because they drop all the episodes out there at once doesn’t mean we have to blow through them at one sitting. I’m pro-choice.
Michael, I’m pro-choice, too! Though I have to admit I’m an occasional binger.
I plan on watching this, George.
Looks good and Martin Short is getting great reviews.
I have his autobiography on my Kindle so maybe I’ll read that next. He’s always a good interview.
Beth, Martin Short is outstanding in ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. I knew he was funny, but I didn’t appreciate Martin Short’s acting talent before this series.
It’s a series, not a movie? No thanks. Martin? No thanks. Short? No thanks. In sum: no thanks.
Re: Jeff’s comment, I’d love to see Vera, but no Britbox. Why are so many channels, and so many things broken up? They all do it for profit, but it just makes things hard or impossible to watch. Bah.
We watched the first one over the weekend, It was pretty much the mix as usual – Vera and her team solve the case. We noticed that too – some are on PBS, some onBritbox and some on Acorn. Why?
Acorn was a syndicator, and remains so (mostly to public television in the US, but not exclusively…they also sold to the small commercial network Retro TV, for example), before it was a streaming service. I’ll have to double-check, but it might be now that PBS is buying them directly, rather than Acorn syndicating episodes to PBS and indy public stations (the few remaining). BritBox, as a BBC project, would get first crack at the new ones, if they choose to.
Or, more relevantly to VERA, an ITV series, since ITv and the BBC are partners in Britbox, they snapped up streaming rights for the seasons after Britbox was formed. Probably through a deal directly with ITV, VERA is presented to PBS sttions via Sacramento station KVTE.
Rick, VERA is available on our local PBS station.
Grr. KVIE.
And this was All Too Quick and mistaken. Looks like Acorn feeds the early seasons to PBS and other public stations at this point.
Nevertheless, those of us who’d just like to watch the show, already paying over $200/mo for the cable coming in through the wall, it makes things complicated and expensive. Damn and blast.
Alas, not much if any of that money goes to the local PBS affiliate.