Only Murders in the Building season four: Goofy, outlandish and an absolute joy

Only Murders in the Building was always attention-grabbing. A headline cast of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez is declarative – you’re saying to the world, “Big stars doing big things!”

While that first season had its share of special guests (Nathan Lane, Tina Fey, Sting), the cavalcade of glitzy interlopers in the latest episodes, starting today, is incomparable.

Just take in the names popping into season four – Meryl Streep, Melissa McCarthy, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, Zach Galiafinakis, Richard Kind, Molly Shannon, Kumail Nanjiani, Jane Lynch, Paul Rudd and, for any You’re the Worst fans out there, Desmin Borges, or Pachinko and Devs peeps, Jin Ha.

It’s an impressive ensemble, and that’s on top of now Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

The problem with having that many superstars is it starts to feel a lot like stunt casting and over-reliance on celebrity rather than the fundamentals of storytelling – the writing. You have to be so careful to justify that many famous faces without taking you out of its universe.

Luckily for fans, that venn diagram of murder and showbiz was baked into the show from the beginning. The core trio of Charles, Mabel and Oliver were always in that world.

Charles was a former TV star, Oliver was a theatre producer and the three of them podcast about the unfortunate deaths in their New York City apartment complex.

It’s the podcast that takes them to Hollywood after a studio tells them they’re making a movie out of their sleuthing. The producer (Shannon) introduces them to the stars set to play them in the movie-within-the-show, Levy, Longoria and Galiafinakis portraying exaggerated versions of themselves.

That’s hardly a new trope but it’s a beloved one, seeing actors spoofing themselves as either a bit surly (Galifianakis) or giddy at the prospect of another death (Longoria).

Keeping Levy, Galiafinakis and Longoria around and connected to Charles, Mabel and Oliver can be a bit of a contrivance but this is a series that’s always been over-the-top.

Suspending your disbelief is the trade-off for all the goofs and bizarre scenarios that make Only Murders in the Building one of the funniest and most joyful shows to spend time with.

Who wouldn’t want to live in that world? As long as you’re not one of the four people who have violently died at the Arconia in as many years.

The central mystery this season is who killed Sazz Pataki (Lynch), Charles’ double who was shot in his apartment at the end of the previous season finale.

Was Sazz the target or was Charles the intended victim?

The shot came from across the courtyard from the west side of the building whose quirky residents we get to meet for the first time, including a guy whose apartment is perpetually decorated in Christmas gear (Nanjiani), an eye-patch wearer (Kind) and a family who eats a lot of soup.

With the added chaos of the Hollywood production arriving literally on their doorsteps and the ominous sense that someone in their midst is trying to do them real harm, there’s another side adventure to Charles’ doll-loving sister, played with glee by McCarthy.

There is a lot going on, even without the red herrings and reveals but it mostly keeps it together.

The show’s habit of handballing the narration of each episode to a different supporting character pays uneven dividends – some of them, such as Ha’s screenwriter, feels shortchanged – because Only Murders in the Building has so successfully coalesced the audience’s emotional investment around Charles, Mabel and Oliver.

What it’s missing is that melancholy that laced the first season, a story of three lonely people in a big city finding connections with the same people they avoided eye contact with.

There was something incredibly resonant about that, especially when it was released in August 2021, smack bang in the middle of the second COVID lockdowns.

It’s still an exploration of ageing, friendship and relevance, but it doesn’t have the same emotional oomph as that outstanding first season.

But with its outsized characters, random asides and non-sequiturs, Only Murders in the Building remains an absolute delight.

Only Murders in the Building is streaming on Disney+ from 5pm AEST on August 27