Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Only Murders In The Building’ On Hulu, Where Steve Martin, Martin Short, And Selena Gomez Search For A Killer In Their Luxe Apartment Building

We went into the new Hulu series Only Murders In The Building wondering how the grouping of old reliables Steve Martin and Martin Short were going to mesh with the third star, Selena Gomez. We weren’t worried at all about Martin taking on a regular scripted series role for the first time in his long career because a) he has his buddy Short at his side and 2) he was one of the people who brought this idea to life. But Gomez? Seeing these two old pros work against the former Disney star could have been a mess. But it absolutely worked, and on more than one level. Read on for more…

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear police radios, then all of a sudden, a SWAT team toting automatic weapons burst into a luxury apartment building. Two older men run through the halls, but one wants to go and get their young friend. The get to her apartment, where she’s covered in blood and kneeling over a body. “It’s not what you think,” she tells them.

The Gist: Two months earlier, we hear three people give narratives of their lives in New York as they walk into their apartment building. Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), who used to star in a long-running ’90s police procedural named Brazzos, but hasn’t booked much since. He’s recognized by a young man who used to watch the show with his dad, but now the dad is near death, as it seems most of the show’s fans are.

Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), a Broadway director, loves the city because even longtime residents can expect the unexpected. Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) used to love watching Dateline and tries to figure out how to not get on those shows if she, oh, happens to stab someone in the neck with a knitting needle.

All three are strangers to each other, even though Oliver and Charles have both lived in the building for over 25 years. Oliver is chatty, Charles is quiet, and Mabel more or less keeps her headphones on. When they’re in the elevator together, they see a man in a business suit on the phone, being demanding about a package and holding a garbage bag.

One thing they have in common, though they don’t know it yet, is their love of true crime podcasts, especially ones by reporter Cinda Canning (Tina Fey). They all listen to new episodes as soon as they drop.

When a fire alarm goes off, and everyone has to evacuate, the three of them find each other at a nearby restaurant and bond over their collective love of Canning’s podcast. When they go back in, they find out someone shot himself. They sneak onto the floor where the man, Tim Kono (Julian Cihi) lived, and the grisly scene makes them think that he was murdered instead.

They set off trying to figure out who Kono was and why someone wanted him killed. Also, Charles and Oliver decide to make this caper into a podcast, entitled “Only Murders In The Building”, restricting their focus to, well, only murders that occur in the building.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Only Murders In The Building is a fun takeoff of true crime podcasts and their too-devoted fans, but the feel of the series is very much a traditional comedic mystery, like Clue or Knives Out. The ten-episodes give a lot of room for character development and creators Martin, John Hoffman, and their writing staff take full advantage of it.

Our Take: Our reservations about Gomez bouncing off Short and Martin only lasted a few minutes; Only Murders In The Building turns out to be a funny, well-written, even sometimes emotional series that takes advantage of all three stars’ strengths, and brings an old-fashioned murder comedy into the 21st century. And by the end of the first episode, the whole idea of Gomez playing off these two legends seems as natural as if she was in Three Amigos! with them 35 years ago.

There’s an easygoing rapport among the three, with each of them taking on their initial archetypes: Charles is quiet and reserved, with quirks like making omelets that he immediately throws away. Oliver is the over-the-top showman who is hiding lots of melancholy underneath, as we see when he tries to borrow money again from his son Will (Ryan Broussard). Mabel seems to be the typical snarky millennial with no ambition, but she’s actually harboring a lot of secrets that she doesn’t reveal to Charles and Oliver; her motivation for getting to the bottom of who killed Tim Kono has more to do with just a love of true crime.

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Martin, but we appreciate his later-in-life desire to find the funny in emotional moments and less broad, physical shtick. While neither he nor Short can be as physical as they used to be, they’re both so skilled in the more serious aspects of their roles it makes the funny stuff even better. And Gomez hangs right with them, correcting their use of slang but mostly appreciating that these old guys like the same things she does.

It helps that Martin’s pull landed the show stellar guest stars like Fey and Nathan Lane, playing a deli owner neighbor of Oliver who eventually sponsors the podcast. And there’s a third big guest star which we won’t spoil here, but as soon as you see this person, it generates a pretty big laugh due to its sheer randomness.

Like we said, the ten-episode season gives the writers time to explore all three of these characters’ inner lives and backstories, and that ability makes the story much richer, especially when the perpetually-single Charles meets a bassoonist neighbor named Jan (Amy Ryan) or when Mabel’s old friend Oscar (Aaron Dominguez) comes back in her life.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “Let’s face it: Sometimes it’s easier to find out someone else’s secret than deal with your own,” says Charles as we pan around the unfinished apartment of Mabel’s aunt, and we see that she has a pretty big secret.

Sleeper Star: Da’Vine Joy Randolph is pretty funny as Detective Williams, especially when she says “Enjoy your cute little lives, and be glad you still have one, you goddamn true-crime fuckin’ numbnuts.”

Most Pilot-y Line: None that we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We blew through most of the first eight episodes of Only Murders In The Building that Hulu made available because it was such a funny, comfortable show to enjoy, with the unlikely trio of Short, Martin and Gomez working like a fine-tuned comedic machine pretty soon after their characters first meet.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Only Murders In The Building On Hulu