While I groaned at almost every joke in Only Murders in the Building, Zanna suggested the humour would appeal to an older audience, although given that Selena Gomez is one of the three leads and the show is basically about podcasting, I think they were hoping for a broader audience, in which case they should have tried harder with the jokes. Gomez's cynical millennial character is full of cutting lines and is obviously supposed to be a foil for the upbeat and wacky Martin and Short, but her lines aren't very cutting and she doesn't deliver them very well, so the whole thing is generally quite sad.
The premise is that three strangers living in the same apartment bond over a shared love of true crime podcasts, then make one of their own, about a murder in their building. I liked that premise- and like it still - but I wish they'd done it better. The jokes might have undermined my ability to enjoy or appreciate the intrigue of show's central mystery but the intrigue is so long, loose and drawn-out, that I was bored by it five episodes in, which ironically, is about the same number of episodes it takes me to get bored with most podcasts. Maybe this was a clever piece of self-referentialism on the part of the creators. If it was, that would bring the total number of things I liked about this show to one.
Before starting the show, while waiting for Zanna to arrive in the living room, I watched the first 20 minutes of Count Me In, a documentary I'd never heard of, about drummers. I came across it by accident while scrolling through Netflix, and chose it because I knew I would have no trouble turning it off when Zanna arrived. But I was wrong.
I was completely absorbed from the moment I heard Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers explain how Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones opens Honky Tonk Woman at a tempo of around 103 and ends it at around 109. Smith said this is not an accident, but genius. I didn't even know drummers conceived tempo as a number or what those numbers mean, or why they're not supposed to change. Revelations like this open up the world, make it a more interesting place. What doesn't open up the world is another ho-hum attempt at entertainment from people who should know better.
SHE SAW
It may have been lockdown nerves reaching breaking point but our discussion of the new Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez series Only Murders in the Building was our most heated yet, with Greg accusing me of disagreeing with "everything" he says just to be argumentative. I believe my opinions are genuine but then I also believe a hula-hoop left on our hallway floor for a week is a positivity portal that blasts me with good vibes every time I walk through it, which is to say my perspective, along with my marbles, may have been lost somewhere in this chaos-filled classroom, office, dance studio, piano studio, kindergarten, cesspit we call our home.
The series is about three residents in a well-to-do New York City apartment complex who, obsessed with a true crime podcast, come to believe a suicide in the building is in fact a murder and set about making their own podcast uncovering the crime. It's a comedy, but we didn't laugh as much as the creators intended. The humour is very much in the Martin and Short oeuvre but at their least funny and, if there's one thing Greg can't tolerate, it's a joke that doesn't land. The use of Gomez's character to point out when the two old men are being inappropriate came across as a cheap attempt to allow them to say all their outdated gags with impunity.
Greg thought Gomez's acting was bad, which I didn't agree with (or did I?). I like Gomez but did find her ill-cast. In a three-hander like this, it would've worked better to have a comedian with a contemporary comedic sensibility to trade volleys with the older men.
There were some quirky visual devices that I found enjoyable, if somewhat inconsistent. We're halfway through the series and on the cusp of the podcast becoming entangled in the real-life story of the three protagonists, which gives me - but not Greg - hope the series will take an interesting turn. While neither of us were particularly captivated by the first episode, by the time we got to episode five I was invested and will finish the series based on the mystery and intrigue alone. Greg, on the other hand, is out. He didn't think the plot worked at all and believes that I became engaged in the story only to spite him.
This series will probably divide audiences as much as it did us. It's quite far from a perfect show but in a lockdown you've probably got the time to give it a shot and see whether my opinions are valid or merely a reflection of my lockdown-induced contempt for my husband.
Only Murders in the Building is streaming on Disney+ from Tuesday.
