In this piece · 9 sections+
Yes. Only Murders in the Building is worth watching. It's a warm, light, surprisingly smart whodunit, and the Steve Martin–Martin Short–Selena Gomez trio is the best cast chemistry on streaming right now.
The show takes a premise that sounds like a Hallmark pitch — three true-crime podcast obsessives living in the same fancy Upper West Side building solve a murder in said building — and plays it with more affection and craft than it needs to. Each season is one case, roughly ten episodes, the mystery is actually puzzle-solvable, and the comedy mostly comes from Martin and Short being two of the last living comedians who understand rhythm. Selena Gomez isn't dragging the raft either. She's dry, she's funny, and she holds her own against two men with a combined 100 years of stage time. If you want a comfort watch that doesn't make you feel stupider for watching it, this is the one.
The quick verdict
Yes, it's worth your time. It's a cozy mystery with real jokes, a real plot, and real stars, and it's one of the few modern streaming shows people actually finish. If you like Agatha Christie, Knives Out, old Steve Martin movies, or you just want something your mom and your 22-year-old sister can both watch at Thanksgiving without a fight, start it tonight. Skip it only if you need gore, prestige-TV gloom, or more than one bullet of plot per minute.
What Only Murders in the Building is actually about
Three strangers who live in the Arconia, a storied old Upper West Side apartment building, bond over a shared obsession with true-crime podcasts. A tenant dies under suspicious circumstances. The cops call it a suicide. The three of them do not. So they start their own podcast, and start poking at the body, and the building, and each other, and the walls of the Arconia turn out to be hiding a lot more than the HOA ever disclosed.
The tone is the thing. The show is a comedy first, a mystery second, and both parts work. It's warm, it's twisty, it's a little melancholy around the edges — Martin's character is a washed-up TV detective nobody remembers, Short's is a Broadway director who hasn't had a hit since the Clinton administration, and Gomez's Mabel is carrying a decade of grief she doesn't want to talk about. The jokes land, but there are also real quiet moments. Nobody is talking about the show on social media because nobody is screaming at it. They're just watching it.
The math on time
Four seasons. Roughly 40 episodes. Episodes run about 30 minutes with no filler. That's about 20 hours total if you watch everything through the current run, which, for a show that is actively enjoyable the whole way through, is a steal. For context, that's less time than one season of Stranger Things and the plot moves.
You can also safely bail between seasons. Each season is a self-contained mystery with a new victim, new suspects, and a new guest cast — Cara Delevingne, Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd, Eva Longoria have all taken turns. If you watch season 1 and feel satisfied, you can walk away a complete person. Most people don't walk away. They keep going.
What it gets right
The casting. Steve Martin writing for Steve Martin and Martin Short is the kind of thing streaming is supposed to be for and almost never does. They've been doing this bit together since the '80s and you can feel every one of those years in the timing. Short in particular is a national treasure doing some of his best work — his Oliver Putnam is vain, broke, loud, and somehow lovable, which is a tightrope most actors wouldn't attempt. Selena Gomez could've been a stunt. She isn't. She underplays everything the two of them overplay, and the dynamic snaps into place because of it.
The plotting. These mysteries are fair-play. Clues are planted in episode 2 that pay off in episode 9. Red herrings don't feel like the writers panicked. You can actually sit on your couch and guess who did it, and sometimes you'll be right and sometimes the show will have been a step ahead of you the whole time. That is harder to pull off than it looks. Most prestige mysteries cheat.
The form. The podcast-within-the-show gimmick could've gotten old by episode 4 of season 1. It never does, because the writers keep using it as a storytelling tool, not a bit. Episodes are structured around what the trio is willing to say on-mic versus off, which lets the show play with voiceover, unreliable narration, and the fact that true-crime podcasters are, by definition, exploiting a corpse for content. The show is quietly aware of that and quietly makes fun of it.
What doesn't work
The guest stars are a mixed bag. When the show lands one — Rudd, Streep — it's electric. When it leans too hard on a stunt casting choice, you can feel the writers scrambling to give that person something to do, and the mystery slows down while the famous face monologues. Season 3 catches this bug worst. Not fatal, but noticeable.
The formula is a formula. By season 3 or 4 you've seen the beats. Cold open flashback. Mabel finds a thing. Charles has a breakdown about his career. Oliver has a scheme. Someone we trusted is maybe lying. If you binge all of it in two weeks, the shape starts to show. Watched week-to-week, which is how Hulu actually drops it, this is a feature. Binged, it's a bug.
And the show has a weakness for a cute cameo over a hard ending. Some seasons stick the landing. One or two end on a note that feels like the writers' room ran out of time and reached for whoever's phone number was in the Rolodex. Nothing ruinous. Just the specific flavor of "wait, that's it?" that only legacy streamers deliver.
Who should watch it
If you liked Knives Out, yes. If you liked Clue, Poirot, or the Thursday Murder Club books, yes. If your comfort-watch rotation is The Afterparty, Poker Face, Pushing Daisies, or old-school Columbo — this slots right into that shelf. If you're the person who tells your family "let's just put something on" at the holidays, this is your show. It's the rare streamer that doesn't require you to feel bad to feel entertained.
If you bounced off cozy mysteries because you want blood and dread, no. Only Murders will frustrate you. The stakes are low. Nobody is torturing anyone in a basement. If you need Yellowjackets, go watch Yellowjackets.
If you can't stand Martin Short specifically, be honest with yourself and skip it. He's turned down. He's charming. But he's still a lot of Martin Short.
Where to watch
All four seasons stream on Hulu in the US. If you have a Disney+/Hulu bundle, it's already there. In most international markets, it lives on Disney+ under the Star hub. You can also buy or rent individual seasons on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Vudu if you've cut the Hulu cord. There's no legal free option; it's a flagship original for Hulu and they are not giving it away. There's also an Only Murders in the Building companion novel on Amazon if you've already burned through the show and want more of the Arconia.
FAQ
Is Only Murders in the Building overrated?
No. If anything it's underrated — it's quietly the best-reviewed comedy on streaming for four straight years and nobody talks about it the way they talked about Succession or Severance. It's not reinventing television. It's just doing the fundamentals better than almost anything else on right now.
Does it get better after season 1?
Season 2 is a slight step up. Season 3 is the most divisive — the Broadway-themed season with Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd — some people call it the peak and some think it loses the plot. Season 4 is a return to form. The show has not had a bad season, but it has had a messy one.
Is it too slow?
No. Episodes are 30 minutes. For a mystery, the pacing is brisk. If you want someone shot in the face in the first 90 seconds, this isn't that. But "slow" is not the complaint anyone's leaving on it.
Where do I start, and when do I bail if it's not for me?
Start with season 1, episode 1. Give it through episode 3. If the Arconia, the three leads, and the podcast conceit haven't locked in by the end of episode 3, you're not going to like it. Nothing changes radically after that — it just gets more of itself. If episode 3 works for you, you'll finish all four seasons.
Start tonight. Season 1, episode 1, Hulu, give it three episodes. If episode 3 isn't working on you, you're free to go.
✅ WORTH IT
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