Murder, He Guessed

I've reached a point where my "television diet" always needs a few empty calories. I think I'm far from alone in that; everybody has at least one stupid reality competition, laugh-track-saddled sitcom, or home/self-improvement show on their radar, right? At least one?

Recently, one show that slid quite well into my "dumb but fun" slot was Netflix's Murderville. Adapted from a British series, Murderville stars Will Arnett as self-styled hard-boiled detective Terry Seattle, who each week is saddled with a new partner to solve a homicide with three possible suspects. That partner is always some celebrity appearing as themselves... and without the script that everyone else in the show has received. The guest star is put on the improv spot, and also must actually try to pick up on the clues that in the end will point to the real killer.

To say this show is formulaic is really stating the obvious -- but when it's funny, it's really quite funny. And that generally has a lot to do with who the guest star of the episode is, whether they're game to play around and look foolish, and whether they're willing to "serve back" and put the rest of the cast on the spot. The real stand-outs of the six-episode season were Conan O'Brien (who guest starred in the very first episode), Sharon Stone, and Ken Jeong.

As with most televised improv, some of the funnier moments just come from watching someone slip up and break character. (That's sometimes called "corpsing," which makes for a hilarious meta joke in at least one episode.) Still, equally funny are moments where guest stars jump right into the ridiculous accents they're assigned, scenes when you can see Will Arnett's expression saying "oh, you wanna go right now?!", and moments when the guest star improvises something that clearly no one could have expected.

High art? Of course not. And actually, a really bad show choice for Netflix -- a service that drives all its customers to binge-watch its programming as much as possible. (You'd be smart to give yourself at least one week between each admittedly similar episode of Murderville, lest you tire of the formula too quickly.) Still, this can't be a very expensive show to make, and I got enough laughs out of it that I do hope they'll make more some day. I give Murderville a B.