Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I didn't really have anything to post on Monday or Tuesday which is why I didn't post anything on either of those days. Today on the other hand, I've got the first three episodes of a new show that's on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ here in Canada, called Only Murders in the Building to talk about. This is a spoiler free review so don't worry about that if you haven't watched the show. So let's get into it.
I only heard about Only Murders in the Building last night right before I decided to watch it. I was on Twitter and there was an ad for it as I was scrolling through, catching up on the people I follow. Being that I don't watch alot of new stuff on Disney+ outside of Star Wars and Marvel, I wasn't paying attention to this show at all, as I didn't even know it was coming out. So I logged onto Disney+, saw that the first three episodes of the series dropped yesterday (it's a Tuesday show), and saw they were only about 36 minutes each in length and settled in for the night. It was so good. I'm not a big fan of murder mysteries because I tend to figure it out before the characters do, be it novels, comics, movies or TV shows. I mean, yes, I like old mystery novels like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, but generally the mysteries are fairly easy to figure out once all the suspects have been revealed. There were only one, maybe two, episodes of Castle where I was just as stumped as Castle and Beckett were.
The premise of the show is there are three True Crime podcast fans who live in the Arconia, a high end apartment building in New York City who find themselves investigating an actual murder when one of their neighbours is killed during a fire alarm that caused the evacuation of the entire building. They also start their own True Crime podcast. The three leads are Charles (played by Steve Martin), Oliver (played by Martin Short), and Mabel (played by Selena Gomez). Charles is a retired actor, Oliver is a Broadway director who made a mistake fifteen years ago that cost him any chance to direct another show ever again, and Mabel is a young artist who is renovating her aunt's apartment at the Arconia.
One of my favourite things about this show is that it's a comedy, but it plays itself straight. Almost like the way the 1966 Batman TV series did. But, it's not campy like Batman and Star Trek: The Original Series are. It feels more like The Dukes of Hazzard, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and Murder, She Wrote. It's fun, but doesn't let the humour overtake the show.
Speaking of The Hardy Boys, there's a huge connection between this show and that book series. Mabel read The Hardy Boys with her friends when she was a kid and pretended to solve mysteries like Frank and Joe did in the books. On top of that they show actual books from The Hardy Boys Mystery Series (the original series) in the show. They're all the blue spine, revised text, versions, which I talked about in a previous blog post, as well as the plastic cover reprints from '80s and early '90s, though the original revised text versions from the '50s, '60s, and '70s are prominent in these three episodes. Which was a huge draw for me when I was watching the first episode, which is all I'd intended to watch when I put the show on last night.
I'm not a huge fan of Martin Short even though he's in several movies that I've seen over the years, but what immediately made me want to see what this show was about was Steve Martin as I have seen him in many movies over the years and enjoy his work quite a bit (my favourite being Cheaper by the Dozen). The surprise for me however was Selena Gomez. I watched Wizards of Waverly Place a few times when it was on in the late 2000s and early 2010s because my sister was watching it and even though I was in college and working my butt off, I always tried to make time to hang out with my sister, which meant occasionally watching Wizards of Waverly Place and iCarly and possibly Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody/The Suite Life on Deck. But, I remember Selena from Wizards of Waverly Place and was impressed with her acting but I didn't really follow her career after that. I didn't have much interest in that second generation of Disney Channel stars that started filtering in in the mid to late 2000s like Miley Cyrus, Cole & Dylan Sprouse, Zac Efron, and Ashley Tisdale so even though I watched Wizards of Waverly Place from time to time, I wasn't hugely familiar with Selena Gomez. Though I did find out that both she and Demi Lovato were on Barney & Friends in the early 2000s, long after I'd stopped watching that show.
I was used to Selena playing sarcastic characters as her character on Wizards of Waverly Place was quite sarcastic, but what surprised me about her character on this show, Mabel, is that she can play mysterious quite well. She's not letting Charles and Oliver in on her secret connection to Tim Kono, the murder victim, or that she knows more about the possible reason for the murder than she lets on. As the audience, we know though and I find it fascinating to watch it all unfold.
The best part of this show, for me anyway, is that it's not formulaic. It's not like the police procedurals that have dominated the airwaves for decades. There's only been three episodes so far, but I haven't been able to figure out who murdered Tim Kono. When The Hardy Boys was on I figured out that Frank and Joe's grandmother had something to do with why their mother was killed pretty early on in the season and I had a work in progress theory as to who the actual murderer was. With this though, I have no clue. There's at least one suspect that I believe it could be, but I'm not 100% sure. In fact I'm not even 10% sure about it. Mainly because the show isn't predictable.
Overall, Only Murders in the Building is a fantastic show so far. I'm actually excited to find out what's going to happen next. I love the characters, especially Mabel, and I love the connection to the The Hardy Boys book series. If you like comedies and murder mysteries you're gonna love this show. I highly recommend you watch it. It's on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ here in Canada.
And that my friends is it for me for today. I'll probably be back tomorrow with another post. I've got a cool one planned. Two actually. One for tomorrow and one for Friday, though I might wait until next week. We'll see though. In the meantime have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment