‘Only Murders in the Building’ needs to ‘die now’ with new season

The newest season of the series Only Murders in the Building has dropped, and the audience is not very pleased.

Critic Lucy Mangan at The Guardian explains, “Because I am one of the many devoted fans of OMITB, and we never want it to die. There are many reasons to love it: the wit, the intelligence, Steve Martin (who co-created it with John Hoffman) as closed off Charles Haden-Savage gradually letting his guard down with his unsought new friends, Martin Short as irrepressible theatre director Oliver Putnam – and Selena Gomez in one of the greatest indefinably weird performances ever committed to non-celluloid.”

But it seems the cracks in the show appeared to show much earlier in season 3, “However … season three experienced a little slump, as a couple of guest stars (Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep) landed larger parts, rather than the entertaining cameos previously provided to the likes of Sting and Amy Schumer, and the action moved partly out of the Arconia and on to Broadway, upsetting the delicate balance on which OMITB had thrived.”

“Now, with season five, the centre is failing to hold,” elaborated the critic, “The podcast element falls by the wayside, the proportion of red herrings to genuine progress is off, the action is too often located outside the Arconia, and the core team are too often split up – not least by the return of Streep as Oliver’s now-wife, Loretta. I know that I am probably in a minority in feeling that: a) a little of Streep goes a long way; and b) she should, wherever possible, be kept away from comedy.”

“Too many moments feel laboured where once they would have been nimble and fleet. Howard’s (Michael Cyril Creighton) relationship with the new robot-doorman is absurd in the wrong way, Renée Zellweger as one of the billionaires is just a collection of mannerisms (though Christoph Waltz as another is just what classic OMITB would have ordered and a joy to watch). And Oliver’s snort, which had fallen into welcome abeyance when it became clear that the show was working brilliantly without such gimmicks, is back,” she concluded.

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