The Premise
Three strangers in a fancy Upper West Side apartment building — a washed-up TV actor, a broke Broadway director, and a young woman with a secret — bond over their shared obsession with a true crime podcast. When somebody in the building turns up dead and the cops call it a suicide, they don't buy it, so they start their own podcast to investigate. That's it. Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez. Created by Martin and John Hoffman. It's been running on Hulu since 2021 and just wrapped its fifth season.
The Case For
Martin and Short have been doing a comedy routine together for forty years and it shows. The rhythm between them is the kind of thing you can't fake or cast around — Short goes big, Martin plays it small and dry, and the timing is genuinely calibrated. Gomez is the anchor. She's the deadpan the whole show pivots off of, and once you stop expecting her to match their energy you realize that's the point. The writing takes the podcast satire seriously without getting cute about it, and the Arconia itself is a real production design achievement — an art deco building that feels lived in, class-stratified, and specific. The guest casting is a flex every season: Nathan Lane, Cara Delevingne, Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria. Directors like Cherien Dabis and Jamie Babbit keep the visual language playful without going full quirky-Wes-Anderson.
The Case Against
It's a formula show. Body drops in the pilot, the trio investigates, red herrings pile up, reveal in the finale. If you've seen one season you know the shape of all five, and by seasons four and five the mystery is doing less of the work while the celebrity guest carousel does more. Some episodes lean hard on gimmicks — silent episode, single-POV episode — that critics love and casual viewers find precious. And if Short's whole deal grates on you, there is no version of this show where that gets better. He is turned up to eleven in every scene.
Who It's For, Who'll Bounce
If you liked Knives Out, Poker Face, or the cozier stretches of Elsbeth, you're already in. Anyone who reads mysteries for the plot mechanics rather than the vibe will find these too soft — the clues are fair but not the point. People who came for prestige-tier crime storytelling in the Mare of Easttown register are going to bounce by episode two. Podcast people love this show. So do parents who want something they can actually watch with their mom.
The Ruling
WORTH IT because the craft is real without the show taking itself seriously. The scripts trust the actors, the actors trust each other, and the whodunit machinery is competent enough to keep you honest between the jokes. It doesn't hit the highs of the best mystery TV of the last decade and it isn't trying to. What it's trying to do — a warm, funny, well-cast comfort watch with an actual pulse — it does about as well as anyone's doing it right now. There's no sermon here. No theme is being lectured at you. It's just three people you like solving a murder in a beautiful building, and that's a completely legitimate reason to spend eight hours on a couch.