Only Murders in the Building: A Whodunit Podcast in a Series

Steve Martin, Martin Short & Selena Gomez star in this whodunit podcast show. It seems like an unlikely pairing, the start of a joke: "A washed out Broadway director, an aging out of work actor and a young artist walk into a cafe..." and yet it works so well.

The three of them start out as strangers living in the same building, but their mutual true crime and the same true crime podcast that they all listen to lays the foundation of their friendship. This is further augmented by the fact that a person dies in the building. And is it? Tim Kono, a guy who previously shared the elevator (yes, a few moments later in the above photo) with the three.

The police dismiss it as a suicide, while these three have an other ideas, that it is actually a murder. They take it upon themselves to solve the case and understand the mysterious happenings (the untimely fire alarm, the tie dye guy running up the stair instead of with the residents downwards,...) leading up to the murder. In addition, they start their own podcast, which they call, yes you guessed it: Only Murders in the Building.

And so starts our show, with the three of them collecting clues on the building's residents and identify who has the most incentive to kill Tim. We meet a cast of colorful characters, each with their own eccentricities that make it seem likely that they have some hidden motive. Michael's girlfriend from the Office, Amy Ryan, also shows up as a bassoonist. Ironically this time her name is Jan. She gets close to Steve Martin's character, Charles

Bringing the search to the 21st century, the Old with the New, the dynamics between the three characters are fun to watch. The show has a simple premise. A whodunit murder mystery with the podcast as an added layer to it. As characters and suspects are introduced, we get to see the bigger picture, bit by bit.

Connections between Tim Kono and Mabel (played by Selena) come to light and we lean that the tie dye guy is another of their mutual friends put away in jail a few years ago.

The mystery of what happened 10 years ago comes to light and that adds another layer of complication to the mystery. It seemed that Tim Kono was also investigating the same and was close to the truth just before he was murdered. Through this, old friends drop by to shed better light and the podcast's meager fan club also chip in for clearing up the mystery.

Even after the people responsible for the incident 10 years ago are put away, it seems the murderer is still scot-free as expected until some new evidence comes to light and we get some light on the real murderer. I had some inkling of it, but it truly did seem so unlikely for it to be true. Staging an attack on your own self to remove you as a suspect is the oldest trick in the book.

It is once the murderer is put away and when things seem to settle down, that we are reminded of the opening of the series. There was another murder in the building and another podcast in the making called "Only Murderers in the Building". This time Mabel is found over the body of the building superintendent, Bunny. This time Bunny is wearing the die dye hoodie.

Final Thoughts

I love whodunit mysteries and this series was a great show in those lines. We witnessed the old and the young working together and the use of the 21st century tech in podcasts, smartphones, security cameras & more was nicely done. I had fun watching the show with my sister and am looking forward to the next season.