Only Murders In The Building Season 5 Review | Of Mobs, Billionaires And Secret Casinos

I always wonder how people still live in a building that has murders in its resume. But in its fifth season now, Only Murders in the Building (OMITB) still manages to fold in a cosy whodunnit packed with satire, peppy one-liners and intergenerational friendships. Its trio of main characters—Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), Charles Haden-Savage (Steve Martin) and Oliver Putnam (Martin Short)—continues to bond over their love of true crime podcasts, having started their own, while forging connections with the assorted misfits in The Arconia, their apartment building in New York City’s Upper West Side and the world outside it.

Amidst the ever-constant chaos of the murders in their apartment building, they have a knack for getting themselves into trouble, and are dealing with their own demons. Oliver marries Loretta (Meryl Streep, wasted on comedy) at the end of season four, who is mostly absent in season five until episode six, when she makes an appearance again wanting to do a bit of sleuthing herself. Mabel has been reunited with her arch nemesis—a celebrity pop star Althea, who calls herself ‘The’ (Beanie Feldstein); they were middle school besties who had a nuclear level fallout thereafter and now Mabel can’t deal with the fact that she has the penthouse above her and is on the top 10 of Wondify and everyone is grooving to her music, including Charles, who is now taking testosterone supplements for his virility.

There are many reasons to love OMITB : the wit, the intelligence, the sticky situations the sleuthing trio get into, mostly due to their foot-in-mouth disease. Steve Martin (who co-created it with John Hoffman) as closed off Haden-Savage (once-upon-a-Brazzo, a TV avatar he is still hung over from) is sharp and always funny in the way he is gradually letting his guard down with his accidental new friends: Martin Short as the irrepressible theatre director Putnam and Selena Gomez in an indefinably weird and stoic, yet lovable non-celluloid performance. There is also the glamour of the Arconia building and a lovely doorman montage in season 5, telling the story of Manhattan as it were, through its long standing witness.

Season four was a re-anchoring, despite the trips and flashbacks to Hollywood sets, getting us mostly back on track. It opened us to the possibility of the Only Murders podcast becoming a film, giving us the rarely seen play-within-a-play-within-a-play device

Season five opens in the traditional manner, with Oliver’s wedding being hampered with a murder at the end—although may be it was a gift, setting off the chemistry between the trio all over again. Our heroes find another body in the building (or at least around it, in the building fountain): this time of Lester the doorman (Teddy Coluca). Soon arrive the clues (including a missing finger, a mafia connection and an elevator crank), another body of mob boss Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale), the suspects (including Téa Leoni as his Italian widow and the potential love interest for Charles), three billionaires in a secret underground casino and Lester’s wife, Lorraine (Dianne Wiest, her brilliance eternal).

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. Too many moments feel laboured where they would once have been nimble and fleet. Howard’s (Michael Cyril Creighton) relationship with the new robot-doorman is absurd, and not in an appealing way, Renée Zellweger as one of the billionaires is just a collection of mannerisms and twitches, though Christoph Waltz as another is just what classic OMITB would have ordered and a joy to watch. As is Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Detective Donna Williams.

However, the show is still charming, fun, and has enough flashes of the old dynamic to keep us hooked and hopeful. Martin, Short and Gomez have not lost sight of their character quirks; Oliver’s snort is back, much to our disapproval but the flashback vignettes of him as a child and what endeared him to the theatre are moving; Charles is on a roll with his new dating app and Mabel’s love-hate track with once-upon-a-best-friend is endearing and relatable.