The house itself would be worth a story: starring in Steve Martin’s Disney+ series Only Murders in the Building is actually playing the Arconia, a huge old apartment block on New York’s Upper West Side that functions a bit like a small town within a big city. Normalos, bohemians, ex-stars and those who still are live there under one roof. And occasionally murder happens.
Steve Martin plays the slightly egocentric actor Charles, who rarely finds jobs anymore; Martin Short is the equally egocentric director Oliver Putnam, who can no longer find any jobs at all; and Selena Gomez plays Mabel, who is just finding a job in her life. Even the two older gentlemen are not an obvious team, but they form a trio with Mabel, which develops a heartbreaking solidarity over the course of the series. Sharing a love of the same true-crime podcast and a need for a purpose, they join forces in season one, investigate a home suicide, and have unexpected success.
Right at the beginning of season two, of which new episodes are now airing every Tuesday, real cohesion is required: Bunny, the chairwoman of the owners’ meeting, who would have liked to expel the three of them from the house, was found dead in Mabel’s apartment. Mabel is suspected of murder, new podcast, new resident in the penthouse: Sting, who reigned supreme in the first season as a disgustingly enraptured version of himself, has been replaced by a bitchy, conceited Amy Schumer, who is considering filming the in-house murder.
The idea for the Disney series Only Murders in the Building Steve Martin had it himself, and maybe that’s why it’s so good – a funny whodunnit, exciting but not gory, and full of lovable characters. Shirley MacLaine then also appears as Bunny’s mother and tells Charles in passing that she was his father’s lover. He can now consider whether the nasty Bunny was his half-sister. And at some point in the course of the second season, what was going on with the arrest of Charles’ bloodied father might come out.
The journeys into the past of the Arconia, where some people have lived their whole lives, were already immensely charming in the first season – a look at a New York that no longer exists. In the New York Times recently you could read what there is to know about the Belnord, the apartment block from 1909 that plays the part of the Arconia: In this magnificent building with the huge apartments, simple people once lived, when it was run down, socialists and immigrants and artists mingled here. Of course, at some point investors put an end to this biotope of capped rents – but one or the other Oliver Putnam, whom urban development has actually raced past for a long time, has actually not allowed himself to be gentrified away.
“Only Murders in the Building”new episodes every Tuesday on Disney+.
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