The old school, screwball charm of Only Murders in the Building (Disney +, Tuesday) remains undimmed as the cosy whodunnit roars back for an agreeable fifth season.
Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short return as a trio of unlikely sleuths investigating dark deeds in a 21st century version of Woody Allen’s Upper East Side – joined by a new cast of A-list guests who fling themselves into the silliness with the aplomb of an assassin plunging a knife.
This time, the crime is the bumping off of Arconia doorman Lester, found dead in the pool at the front of the high-end apartment complex.
The guests, meanwhile, include Renée Zellweger as a Martha Stewart-style lifestyle influencer and Christoph Waltz as a psychopathic tech mogul – a sort of ghoulish Germanic Elon Musk, only not quite as creepy.
These characters are drawn into the conspiracy that swirls around Lester’s disappearance. As is Bobby Cannavale’s Nicky Caccimelio, the self-proclaimed “King of Dry Cleaning”, whose disappearance prompts his wife, Sofia (Téa Leoni), to seek out Martin, Gomez and Short’s amateur detectives.
Five seasons in, Only Murders should by right have started to run out of puff. Yet far from turning stale, this is one of the strongest series yet – largely because show runners Martin and John Hoffmann lean further into the murder-mystery side of things with deadly intent.
There’s a knotty plot involving yet more subterranean secrets from the Arconia’s past – blended with tart commentary on the modern-day robber barons who run America.
One of the show’s strengths continues to be the deadpan glee with which it skewers its lead characters. Martin is Charles-Haden Savage, a semi-retired actor still dining out on the faded glories of the 1990s cop show he fronted.
Short is even more pathetic as arch-luvvy Oliver Putnam, a Broadway producer whose string of disasters included a musical version of Tom Hanks’s Splash done in by wonky hydraulics. Gomez, for her part, portrays an emotionally adrift millennial whose friendship with Savage and Putnam has brought some much-needed structure to her life.
As before, the show also satirises the true crime podcast industry – this time via a hilarious mafia podcast produced by a group of spoiled Gen Z-ers who naively pine for the glory days of the mob.
All that and it’s still funny as anything. The comedy power of double-act Martin and Short was already a matter of record going back decades (they performed together in Dublin on the eve of the pandemic). But Gomez brings her own spark – the trio are hilarious together and, fuelled by that chemistry, Only Murders has delivered another killer season.