Only Murders in the Building-Season Three (2023) * * 1/2

 

Starring:  Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Paul Rudd, Meryl Streep, Matthew Broderick, Linda Emond, Jeremy Shamos, Jesse Williams 

The Arconia building had better ramp up security because three murders within three years is sure to drive away potential tenants and cause the current ones to move far away.  I would think the ownership or at least the board would want to investigate why these deaths keep occurring and not leave to it to Charles, Oliver, and Mabel to solve the crimes.  Season two ended with the death of actor Ben Glenroy (Rudd) on stage during the premiere of Oliver's new Broadway show.  Finally, we have a suspicious passing that didn't occur within the Arconia's walls.  

That break did not last long, as it turns out, because Ben survives the onstage calamity only to be later thrown down an elevator shaft in the Arconia.  This puts the show on hold as its lead actor now needs to be recast.  Oliver dreams up rewriting the show as a musical after learning of a critic's savage panning of it which was never published.   This season of Only Murders in the Building spends as much time on the reworking of the production as it does Ben's murder.   The investigation is more fun than the cast rollicking through the show's musical numbers.

Rudd plays the obnoxious victim Ben, who rubs nearly everyone the wrong way, while Meryl Streep joins the cast as Loretta Durkin, a lifelong, unsuccessful actress finally getting her big Broadway break who grows into Oliver's romantic interest.   She and Ben surely don't see eye-to-eye and harbors a secret.  Did she kill Ben?  Even Charles (Martin) got into a physical altercation with Ben shortly before the curtain rose on opening night.  Turns out, he and Ben have a beef dating back to Ben's time as a child actor.  Only Murders in the Building semi-successfully attempts to satirize Broadway and stick to its Agatha Christie-style with our amateur crime solvers, who should turn professional after this season because they're better at figuring these cases out than the cops.  Matthew Broderick makes a funny cameo appearance as himself whom Oliver idol-worships when he joins the play's cast, but then soon enrages him with his method acting and over-rehearsing to the point of exhaustion...for Oliver. 

However, the season as a whole is uneven, despite the terrific performances (even Selena Gomez abandons the constant deadpan).  The solution to the whodunit feels anticlimactic, as if the murder itself was an afterthought.