An intelligent and reckless show about love for "true crimes", podcasts and the spontaneity that everyone needs.
Residents of Manhattan's upmarket Arkonia housing estate suddenly find themselves in the midst of a convoluted murder of one of their neighbors, a young businessman, Tim Kono. After the police close the case, three completely different residents begin to independently investigate the crime, documenting the process in a podcast format.
In the Hulu project, launched at the end of August, several popular ingredients are neatly laid out: the murder itself, an extraordinary way of finding its solution, the work of two different generations with each other and with their past, intelligent humor, familiar to everyone the housing issue. Viewers are invited to put them together, without resorting to the innovative technology of the "Black Mirror" with a choice of development options, but in the old way, intuitively following the authors and agreeing with them in almost everything. The 30-minute timing of the episode, made and designed for a podcast, as an audiovisual impression, also allows you to do this. In Russia, podcasts are gaining more and more popularity (shoutout to "Laura Palna's Diary" as one of the most ambitious TV series in this medium), but the absolute dominance of the genre has taken place and continues for at least a decade or more and belongs in this matter to the States, where crimes and detectives more than sacred.
The series is co-written by John Hoffman (Grace and Frankie) and Steve Martin, who also stars once-popular actor Charles Hayden-Savage. Charles is sometimes recognized by some of the fans on the street - all thanks to Inspector Brazzo, a popular detective in the 80s and a national hero on the other side of the screen. These days, Charles is single, separated from his wife long ago and prepares the same omelet from eggs with green pepper, which he throws away without eating.
Martin Short appears as the sparkling theater director Oliver Putnam, who lost almost all his fame and savings after the disastrous Broadway musical Splash, where members of the crowd fell on the stage with a characteristic sound instead of water. Now Putnam faces eviction from Arconia for overdue bills and non-payment of fees, and he himself eats exclusively snacks and vegetables, dipping them in expired hummus.
The third member of the team, the mysterious Mabel, played by pop star and Disney Channel alumnus Selena Gomez (plus an avid cook with her own show). As it turns out later, Mabel had a lot to do with the murdered Tim Kono, so she joins the investigation not for good company, but behind the secrets of the past, traumatic and no less bloody. The trio, despite the dissimilarity and awkward disregard of each other in the elevator, manages to dock and by the second episode is actively launching a series of podcasts with a minimum listener base (no more than a dozen people). Is it worth mentioning that gradually, after emerging secrets, public interest in "Arkonia" as a damned apart-hotel will increase in a hermetic progression?
Murders enjoy themselves - a familiarly constructed, fall-perfect, witty spy-comedy novel that has time to present losers in a new light, to make them believe that everyone can be a detective, no matter how far-fetched theories may seem at first. You may not have to guess about the criminals to the last, but for the sake of the process it is definitely worth getting yourself carried away. Potential suspects will include the singer Sting, who recently fired a murdered man for slowness, a voyeur who does not hear, the son of an influential podcast sponsor and a suspicious cat lover in mourning. Clues include frozen cats, all sorts of jewelry, a children's adventure book series, and custom sex toys.
The humanity of the heroes will undergo considerable tests: Charles will again be reminded of the finiteness of any relationship, Oliver will lose and restore the respect of his son, Mabel will have to get even with her semi-privileged past and fall in love with an unfairly accused friend. All three central actors find themselves linked in a working, harmonious combination, despite the obvious and sometimes humorously offensive divisions into boomers and buzzers in the text (special attention to the term bestie, that is, best friend). Short's eccentric energy almost always draws attention to himself, Martin withstands the middle, Gomez is more and more confidently moving away from the Disney past (Harmony Corin with "Spring Break" and Jarmusch with "The Dead Don't Die" were warning shots).
The ring structure will also play a role; The series will start the way it ends: the heroes frozen at the scene of another murder will be suspected, their story will be told by a much more successful podcast played by Tina Fey. If New York was a TV series in 2021, then, without viscous hesitation, I would have chosen the shell of Murders in One Building: cozy and at the same time merciless, equally combining comedy and drama, intrigue and grief, extravagant neighbors, human buildings ... Retro and new-old era of carelessness, when you know exactly how it will end, and you still keep watching.
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