(courtesy IMP Awards)
While Only Murders in the Building is all about getting to the bottom of the titular murderous mystery, and that indeed happens in the final four episodes of this wonderful show’s fifth season, what has always made it compelling viewing is the way it focuses on the community at the heart of the storytelling.
This sense of vital communal contact has been a key facet of the show since its first season when three highly different people – retired actor and man in search of love, Charles Hayden-Savage (Steve Martin), semi-successful, lovably narcissistic theatre impresario Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and young artist in search of life purpose, Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) – met and bonded in their sprawling, storied apartment complex, the Arconia, over a Cina Canning (Tina Fey) true crime podcast.
In a city humming and throbbing with people en masse, Only Murders in the Building made the highly timely point that even when you’re surrounded by people, you can be terribly alone, and that that sense of trenchant loneliness is not good for anyone.
We are not islands, not even a little bit, and what has powered Only Murders in the Building through five sweet and gloriously charming seasons is a very emotional weighty focus on the power and necessity of community and how its absence can have a corrosive effect on anyone.
So, while yes, these four final episodes of season five did indeed twist and turn on red herrings and dead ends, and deliver the Agatha Christie-an library reveal moment – true it took place in a hidden lux gambling den beneath the Arconia but the effect was the same – and no, the killer cannot be revealed because #SPOILERS, what emerged quite strongly was the humanity that’s always been at the heart of the show.
One dynamic that fuelled some soul searching, and yes, it was tinged with the show’s quirky trademark sense of the gently ridiculous which included a midnight therapy session where Detective Donna Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) turned out to be better at digging into the broken psyches of Charles and Oliver than the therapist himself, was the fact that everyone is close to being forced out of the Arconia.
Quite why must be left to the viewing of these episodes but the end result of machinations by billionaire Camila White (Renée Zellweger) is that Charles, Oliver and Mabel, already struggling with the corporate restrictions on their podcast and the way it’s hobbled their free-flowing investigations, face being separated from each other.
While they can in theory still catch up even if they live in separate buildings, they all recognise that it will a serious magnitude harder to make that happen and that the very thing that glued them together before they became fast friends might cease to exist since they’d no longer be in the same building.
But again, while they mourn they possible loss of the podcast’s narrative premise, what they realise they will miss far more is being close to each other, and while catch-ups could happen, life could get in the way and without the podcast driving the need to be together, they likely won’t see anywhere near as much of each other.
Quite where that all lands can’t be revealed because #SPOILERS but suffice to say the end of the season, which as usual involves the death of someone whose untimely passing will be investigated in the just confirmed sixth season, makes it clear that the threesome will still be close to home, although London as a sleuthing location may be in the offing.
But that’s the future and what matters here is the here and now and it’s one where not only Charles, Oliver and Mabel face being torn apart.
One of the show’s breakout characters, Howard Morris (Michael Cyril Creighton), a gay cat lover who wants nothing more than to find lasting love and whose rules-nothing-nut-the-rules persona has softened somewhat over the seasons to the point where he is allowed a certain heartbreaking vulnerability, wants to stay put too and while he likely wouldn’t admit it, would be lost without Charles, Mabel and Oliver, and even cranky Uma Heller (Jackie Hoffman) and super quirky Vince Fish (Richard Kind) who may have love in the offing (and so, the bonds of community, so much a part of Only Murders in the Building grow still stronger).
The show has done a lovely job of building out a loose ensemble and much of that drives the comedy generally, and certainly in these four emotionally searing-lite episodes is the offbeat humanity of the people who live in the building where all the murders and the mystery solving takes place.
Only Murders in the Building is every bit as much an examination of humanity when it’s placed under pressure and stretched away from the communal bonds that have defined and powered us as a species as it is a romp through an unorthodox murder investigation, and while you could argue every whodunnit places humanity in the blinding spotlight and well and truly under the microscope, this show does it incredibly effectively.
It might seem light and frothy and quirky, and sure, to some extent it undoubtedly is, happily sitting in the cosy crime genre it calls home, but there’s also real emotional weight and substance here and that’s what makes it such compelling viewing.
It’s well and truly on show in the closing episodes of the fifth season where justice is served, the podcast is saved and everyone may get to stay at home in the art deco wonder they love, and while yes, Only Murders in the Building is a great big crime of justice and community and connection, it’s greatest strength is that it places people front and centre at every twist and turn of its highly entertaining storytelling and that turns what could be just a quirkily diverting murder mystery show into something far more affecting that lasts well beyond the jaunty theme music and cute premise and cements itself firmly and with real substance in your heart.
Only Murders in the Building streams on Disney+