By Jack Henry

Haneefah Wood. Image credit: IMDB.

Netflix’s newest murder mystery is not what you would expect. Murderville is a new, six-episode series focused on Detective Terry Seattle, played by Will Arnet, as he navigates his way through various problems, ranging from solving murder cases to coping with his recent divorce from his boss, Police Chief Rhonda Jenkins-Seattle, played by Haneefa Wood. 

In each episode of Murderville there is a new guest star, ranging from former professional football players to Emmy Award-winning actresses, with Seattle and Jenkins-Seattle, as well as coroner Amber Kang, played by Lilan Bowden, being the only recurring main characters.

Each of the six episodes follows the classic path of a murder mystery, with the victim being presented at the beginning, with a cause of death, and the detective discovering clues and speaking with suspects to help them find the killer as the episode goes along. However, in Murderville there is a twist: each of these guest stars is not given a script, and they must improvise their way through an entire episode while trying to figure out who the murderer is. The guest is largely left to their own devices, as Seattle serves merely as transportation and comedic relief, often causing distractions and giving the guest tasks to do along the way. 

Will Arnett. Image credit: IMDB.

Of the six guest stars, two stood out to me the most: Super Bowl champion Marshawn Lynch and Emmy Award-winning actor Kumail Nanjiani. Lynch, who has very little acting history, played his role perfectly, feeding into Seattle’s jokes with funny responses and alluding to his intelligence from his years at the University of California, Berkeley. Nanjiani offers a very similar comedy style to Lynch, yet he performed it better. Nanjiani is constantly talking back to Seattle and offers his own clever remarks in response to Seattle’s commentary. 

While it is a very funny show, Murderville does have some very noticeable flaws. Each episode follows the same, repetitive structure, with Seattle meeting the guest star, then the two of them traveling to the coroner’s office, then to three different locations to investigate three different suspects. Finally, they travel to a place where they have gathered all three suspects, typically somewhere that the viewer would not expect the reveal of the murderer to take place. The guest star then says who they think it is, which is then followed up by Chief Jones-Seattle walking in and confirming or disproving who the guest star chose as the murderer. 

Murderville is based off of the show Murder in Successville, a British sitcom of the same style. The concept of these shows may be based off of mystery dinner theater, where a murder mystery style play is performed in a restaurant, and the diners are tasked with solving the mystery as they eat. 

Due to its repetitiveness, Murderville is not a show that I would recommend binging. Instead, you can watch maybe one or two episodes a week, as the outcomes become very predictable, and episodes tend to drag on if watched in succession. 

Image credit: Netflix.

That being said, however, Murderville requires the viewer to pay attention, as there are small clues hidden in the different locations that the detectives travel to that eventually lead to the reveal of the killer.

Personally, I really enjoyed the show. I liked how it required me to pay attention to every last detail, and how each episode isn’t designed to be the most difficult of puzzles, but it is still a challenge. I unfortunately made the mistake of binge-watching the show over a two-day period. This made it so the endings became more predictable, and I easily began picking up the small details that the show incorporates to reveal the killer.

All in all, Murderville is a funny show, and I recommend that you give it a try if you enjoy other comedy or mystery shows.