‘Murderville: Season 1’ Review (Netflix)
One of the greatest parties I have ever experienced took place just under ten years ago when the youth club I attended at the time organised a murder mystery event. Prior to the evening, every person was given a character pack that contained details of the evening, character information costume ideas, key plot points and important information that would be revealed at certain points in the event! We had to make sure that we fully read and understood all the information in the pack, as this would allow the evening to function as it was intended to. The party was set on a boat where the captain of the show was mysteriously murdered and so one of the passengers had to take over and delivered everyone back to where they came from. Every other person had to go around chatting to everyone to try and figure out who had committed the horrendous crime.
I was given the role of a rather affluent, double-crossing, German spy who had to secretly convene with other undercover spies. Throughout the night, however, my character discovered that his position as a spy had been revealed to the authorities back home, so I needed to convince the new captain to not head to the pre-arranged location and instead dock somewhere else to avoid facing the waiting authorities. Since this party, I have wanted to do another one of these events but have yet to get a group together willing to do all the stuff for such an experience. The thing with an event such as this is that every single person has to be fully involved with an event like this otherwise it won’t work, as apart from the key story points, all of the dialogue has to be totally improvised which is why the brand new Netflix original murder mystery show Murderville works so well!
Murderville is a show where one celebrity guest is invited to help solve a murder that has recently happened. The show has a line-up of guests including the hilarious Ken Jeong, the incredible Conan O’Brien and the brilliant Sharon Stone among others! The twist however is that the special guest is the only person on the show who has not been given a script for the episode and so they have to improvise their way through it and in the end have to make the official arrest of who they think is the criminal. The guest is brought in as an apprentice to Detective Terry Seattle (played by Arrested Development star Will Arnett) who has to interact with the confused celebrity guest. Throughout the episode, the celeb is encouraged to make notes of key story points and then uses this to identify the killer. The episodes have been carefully written and created to allow for room to improvise but also include genuine crime-solving techniques that are used in real-life. All this information is then used by the special guest to decide who they think committed the crime and it is then revealed whether their suspicions are correct or not. The script has been carefully created to not only fit the important clues but to also allow for all the elements… it’s incredible and is a testament to the talent of the people behind this project. Outside of the actual solving of the crimes we have the over-arching story of Terry Seattle who is trying to solve the murder of his partner Lori (represented by a picture of Jennifer Aniston) which ties the episodes together.
The other really clever thing about Murderville is that it is totally aware of how ridiculous the episodes are and the comedy that has been used. The show opens with an overly dramatic, stereotypical detective crime show that explains the background to the show. There were scenes in the episodes that had the viewers and even cast in hysterics. In the episode involving Conan O’Brien, there was a scene where he had to interrogate a suspect while at a restaurant where his partner in crime was adding more and more hot sauce onto his food as the interview was going on. To watch Conan struggle with the spicy-ness of the food while conducting an interview was hilarious, and both actors were trying desperately hard not to break character. In the same episode, there is a moment where Conan hilariously overreacts to a magician’s simple tricks which was again brilliant.
Overall, Murderville is a hilarious murder mystery series that is totally aware of the genre it falls into. They invited celebrities who were not given a script allowed for some totally unexpected scenes that had everyone in tears (including the cast) and the way the episodes are crafted to create a space for these moments was brilliant.
***½ 3.5/5
Murderville is available to watch on Netflix now.