Only Murders In The Building Season 3 review: Just how many murders in a single building is too many?

A still from Only Murders in the Building season 3, streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.

Hulu’s true crime podcast parody (streaming in India on Disney+ Hotstar) Only Murders In The Building is back for an improbable third season. The first few episodes rely heavily on the star power of its guests — Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep, to hold the fort while the show goes through some plot contortions to bring our mismatched trio — Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, back together doing what they do best.

The previous season of Only Murders In The Building ended with a teaser epilogue set on the opening night of ambitious theatre director Oliver Putnam’s (Martin Short) new Broadway show — Death Rattle. As his star, Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd) stepped into the spotlight to deliver his monologue, he suddenly collapsed and died, setting the stage (pardon the pun) for another delicious murder mystery. Of course, attentive viewers had noted at the time that this murder did not, as the show title stipulates, take place in the building.

The season premiere reveals the ‘death’ to be a failed attempt at poisoning while bringing the entire cast of characters back to the Arconia, so that Glenroy can be murdered for good, this time on the premises. The Broadway setting gives us a new string of suspects consisting of the cast and crew, most of whom have been wronged in some way by the unpleasant Glenroy. Paul Rudd, famously one of Hollywood’s real-life ‘nice guys’, relishes the chance to play a vain and mean-spirited superstar.

The new season takes its time to set up the stakes. Since the novelty of true crime podcast parody has worn off with the first two seasons, the writers smartly follow the characters and their individual motivations. Oliver finally has a chance at a comeback and is more interested in getting his show back on track after the death of his star, while Steve Martin’s Charles takes another stab at a romantic life. Only Mabel, played by a droll Selena Gomez, is committed to the idea of a podcast. As she finally admits to Oliver and Charles, it’s not because of any particular sense of justice, but because she misses hanging out with them and is on the verge of moving out of the Arconia. Their arcs in the first few episodes are largely about the three of them finding alignment in their motivations.

Focusing on the why also allows the show to spend some quality time with its leads, despite the ever-growing roster. Martin Short and Steve Martin have long had pitch perfect chemistry — from Three Amigos (1986) to the Father of the Bride series, and their comedy tours. The secret weapon of the show is Selena Gomez, who initially functioned merely as a younger counterpoint to the septuagenarians but over time has transformed into an old soul in millennial packaging.

The big draw of the season is Meryl Streep as Loretta Durkin, an aspiring actress who never really found that one elusive role. Streep is back on television in her first major outing since the second season of Big Little Lies (2017). She has so far played it straight, except for one scene at the table read where she gets to poke fun at herself with deliberately bad accent work. But Streep got to show off her singing chops in episode 3 in a last ditch effort to convince the cast to back Oliver’s musical pivot to Death Rattle Dazzle. And it’s an absolute treat to watch Short and Streep sit next to each other at the piano and go through their own tender love story. The showrunners have only used her in three out of the four episodes that have aired. When you have the greatest living actor, you have to deploy her carefully.

Meanwhile, giving stiff competition to Streep is Martin Short’s amazing repertoire of grunts and snorts, which deserve an special Emmy category all by themselves. One can easily imagine Short going through each script and crossing out lines of dialogue saying “I can do this with a grunt”. Short’s Putnam has his own pressing issues this season, what with his doctor clamping down on his consumption of dips (!). Putnam’s obsession with dips gave us arguably the best pop culture reference last season — when he was forced to abandon his dips while walking up the Arconia stairs, Putnam channeled Daniel Day-Lewis’s intense romantic pleadings in The Last of the Mohicans (1992) while saying, “You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you.”

The Broadway setting allows Only Murders... to pay tribute to the art form while simultaneously skewering it. Streep’s song Look for the Light is an original written by Grammy winner Sara Bareilles and the Oscar-winning songwriter-producers of La La Land (2016) Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul. And it would be a shame if the writers didn’t use this opportunity to get Selena Gomez to sing a song as well. Meanwhile, it does look  like the writers missed a trick when they didn’t do a short arc about recasting Glenroy, which would have been a perfect opportunity to poke fun at the Funny Girl debacle from last year with Lea Michele replacing Beanie Feldstein.

The show within the show — Putnam’s Death Rattle (Dazzle) is the writers’ tribute to the grand old dame of mysteries, Agatha Christie. It’s been a great year for Christie on episodic television, between this and Poker Face (streaming on Jio) from Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne, a throwback to '80s style weekly whodunits.

So, dear reader, get ready for a grand symphony of murder and intrigue. Don your detective’s cap as our intrepid trio of podcasters eliminate one suspect after another and finally unmask the killer.