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In the mid-90s, Bonnie and Terry Turner created a TV sitcom about a group of aliens (led by John Lithgow as their self-regarding High Commander) on a research mission to Earth. As they attempted to integrate into human life by posing as an ordinary family, gentle, charming hilarity ensued for six seasons – an unexpectedly long time, and 3rd Rock from the Sun became known as “the show they couldn’t cancel”. The fondness everyone felt for it endured past the show’s technical peak and kept it on our screens until the commercial inviability became too stark and/or the actors’ interest in participating waned. It was a rare pocket of sentimentality in the otherwise ruthless world of television programming.
Only Murders in the Building is in all respects a much better show than 3rd Rock. It manages to fold in a cosy whodunnit, social media satire, zippy one-liners, sight gags, physical comedy and intergenerational friendships and commentary. An undertow of melancholy is ameliorated by optimism as its trio of main characters bond over their love of true-crime podcasts, then start their own, forging connections with the assorted misfits in the apartment building they live in, and the wider world. But as the fifth season begins, the memory of 3rd Rock begins to come back to me more strongly.
Because I am one of the many devoted fans of OMITB, and we never want it to die. There are many reasons to love it: the wit, the intelligence, Steve Martin (who co-created it with John Hoffman) as closed off Charles Haden-Savage gradually letting his guard down with his unsought new friends, Martin Short as irrepressible theatre director Oliver Putnam – and Selena Gomez in one of the greatest indefinably weird performances ever committed to non-celluloid. There is also the glamour of the Arconia building, and the fact that the role of manic pixie dream girl went to Short and not Gomez. But we love it beyond all those.
However … season three experienced a little slump, as a couple of guest stars (Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep) landed larger parts, rather than the entertaining cameos previously provided to the likes of Sting and Amy Schumer, and the action moved partly out of the Arconia and on to Broadway, upsetting the delicate balance on which OMITB had thrived. The re-anchoring around Sazz’s death and Charles’s grief in season four, despite the trips and flashbacks to Hollywood sets, got us mostly back on track, and it just about contained the sprawling cast and plotlines occasioned by the Only Murders podcast becoming a film, giving us the rarely seen play-within-a-play-within-a-play device.
Now, with season five, the centre is failing to hold. We ended the previous season in the traditional manner, with our heroes finding another murder in the building (or at least its grounds): this time of Lester the doorman (Teddy Coluca). Then we have another. Then the clues (including a missing finger, a mafia connection and an elevator crank) and suspects (including Téa Leoni as an Italian widow and potential love interest for Charles, who is taking testosterone supplements for his health; three billionaires; and Lester’s wife, Lorraine – Dianne Wiest, her brilliance eternal) begin to arrive. But they feel randomly scattered rather than meaningfully laid. The podcast element falls by the wayside, the proportion of red herrings to genuine progress is off, the action is too often located outside the Arconia, and the core team are too often split up – not least by the return of Streep as Oliver’s now-wife, Loretta. I know that I am probably in a minority in feeling that: a) a little of Streep goes a long way; and b) she should, wherever possible, be kept away from comedy.
Too many moments feel laboured where once they would have been nimble and fleet. Howard’s (Michael Cyril Creighton) relationship with the new robot-doorman is absurd in the wrong way, Renée Zellweger as one of the billionaires is just a collection of mannerisms (though Christoph Waltz as another is just what classic OMITB would have ordered and a joy to watch). And Oliver’s snort, which had fallen into welcome abeyance when it became clear that the show was working brilliantly without such gimmicks, is back.
It is still charming, still fun. It still has enough flashes of the old dynamic to keep us hooked and hopeful. Martin, Short and Gomez have not lost sight of their characters, and a course correction could easily be made for season six. To end it here would be a disservice to all.
