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. <\/p>\n
Steve Martin<\/a>, Selena Gomez<\/a> and Martin Short<\/a> return as a trio of unlikely sleuths investigating dark deeds in a 21st century version of Woody Allen\u2019s Upper East Side \u2013 joined by a new cast of A-list guests who fling themselves into the silliness with the aplomb of an assassin plunging a knife.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The guests, meanwhile, include Ren\u00e9e Zellweger as a Martha Stewart-style lifestyle influencer and Christoph Waltz as a psychopathic tech mogul \u2013 a sort of ghoulish Germanic Elon Musk, only not quite as creepy. <\/p>\n These characters are drawn into the conspiracy that swirls around Lester\u2019s disappearance. As is Bobby Cannavale\u2019s Nicky Caccimelio, the self-proclaimed \u201cKing of Dry Cleaning\u201d, whose disappearance prompts his wife, Sofia (T\u00e9a Leoni), to seek out Martin, Gomez and Short\u2019s amateur detectives. <\/p>\n 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 \u2013 largely because show runners Martin and John Hoffmann lean further into the murder-mystery side of things with deadly intent. <\/p>\n There\u2019s a knotty plot involving yet more subterranean secrets from the Arconia\u2019s past \u2013 blended with tart commentary on the modern-day robber barons who run America. <\/p>\n One of the show\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n Short is even more pathetic as arch-luvvy Oliver Putnam, a Broadway producer whose string of disasters included a musical version of Tom Hanks\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n As before, the show also satirises the true crime podcast industry \u2013 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. <\/p>\n All that and it\u2019s 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 \u2013 the trio are hilarious together and, fuelled by that chemistry, Only Murders has delivered another killer season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The old school, screwball charm of Only Murders in the Building (Disney +, Tuesday) remains undimmed as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[38848,18,117,2215,19,17,30882,8078,30880],"class_list":{"0":"post-52959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-disney-plus","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-for-you","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-martin-short","15":"tag-selena-gomez","16":"tag-steve-martin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}