Only Murders in the Building (TV Program)

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    Why ‘Perfect Strangers’ Keeps Coming Back

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    From “The Leftovers” to “Only Murders in the Building,” “Perfect Strangers,” the wacky 1980s sitcom with a bombastic theme song, is enjoying a strange afterlife.In the latest season of “Only Murders in the Building,” the show’s trio of amateur detectives are investigating yet another murder and discover a theme — and a song — from an unlikely source: another TV show.The show is “Perfect Strangers,” the wacky 1980s sitcom that paired two cousins who — like the stars of “Only Murders” and its new cast of characters this season — couldn’t have been more different. The uplifting, bombastic “Perfect Strangers” theme song appears in the “Only Murders” fourth season, which concludes Tuesday.“We needed something that landed as a clue, something that opened up something curious for our trio to discover, something that kept hitting over and over again,” John Hoffman, the “Only Murders” showrunner, said.And so the “Perfect Strangers” theme song appears as a call sign over the ham radios of misfit residents introduced in this season of “Only Murders” and referred to as “the Westies.” Those are the tenants who live in the West tower of the Arconia, across from where Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) live and where much of the investigation focuses.In one scene, in an apartment in the West tower of the Arconia, the New York City residential building at the center of the show, Mabel softly begins singing.“No matter what the odds are this time / nothing’s gonna stand in my way,” she chimes.Oliver mumbles along: “This flame in my heart / long-lost friend / Gives every dark street / a light at the end.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ Michael Cyril Creighton Is Above Suspicion

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      For years, Michael Cyril Creighton hoped one of his small TV parts would evolve into something more. With “Only Murders,” it finally happened.On a rainy morning in early August, the actor Michael Cyril Creighton sat in a dog friendly cafe on the outskirts of Astoria, Queens. With him was Sharon, his seven-year-old rescue, who is part Chihuahua, part Jack Russell terrier, with a soupçon of haunted doll. Another dog scampered over to their table. Sharon growled low in her throat and bared her teeth.“She has a troubled past,” Creighton said, soothing her. “But she’s great.”Creighton — bespectacled, bearded, with a cuddlesome physique — is more reliably sociable. During a two-hour conversation that began with savory scones and included a damp walk at a nearby sculpture park, he growled not once, not even when interrupted, frequently, by fans of his work on “Only Murders in the Building.”In “Only Murders,” the Hulu series about occasional homicides in a luxury co-op on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Creighton, 45, plays Howard, a librarian and hobbyist yodeler with an impressive sweater game. A gossip and a noodge, keen to be accepted by the building’s amateur detectives, a trio played by Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short, Howard is also capable of surprising vulnerability. So is Creighton, who combines a mordant wit and a clown’s broad instincts with deep feeling.A recurring actor in the show’s first two seasons, Creighton was made a series regular in its third. In Season 4, which premiered on Tuesday, his co-stars include a pig who urinated on his feet between takes.“Look, it’s ridiculous what we’ve got going on in his world,” John Hoffman, the “Only Murders” showrunner said in an interview. “I feel like I can throw him anything and he’ll sort it out. I can’t believe I got so lucky to find him.”In Season 4, Creighton’s character, Howard, owner of many (many) cats, adopts a retired working dog and starts his own podcast, called “Animals and Their Jobs.”Patrick Harbron/DisneyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Goes to Hollywood

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      The murder mystery comedy returns with more celebrities than ever but in a winking, self-aware way.In its first three seasons, the Hulu mystery comedy “Only Murders in the Building” recruited an impressively starry array of guest stars — including Nathan Lane, Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep — to join the already stellar main cast of Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short. Season 4, which starts on Tuesday, has even more famous faces, which can be overwhelming at times. But there’s a knowing quality to the way these celebrities are deployed: “Only Murders” has gone Hollywood, but in a winking, self-aware way.Partly, that’s by … going to Hollywood. In the premiere, Mabel, Charles and Oliver (Gomez, Martin and Short) are summoned to Los Angeles by a Paramount Pictures executive (Molly Shannon, always hilarious) who is desperate to make a movie based on their hit podcast. The A-list cast has already been chosen: Eugene Levy will play Charles, Zach Galifianakis will play Oliver, and Eva Longoria will be Mabel. (For those keeping track of the meta-layers, that’s a group of real celebrities playing themselves as the cast of a fictional movie about a reality-inspired podcast inside a fictional show — starring real celebrities as fictional hosts.)But Mabel has reservations. And Charles is growing increasingly worried about the disappearance of his friend and former stunt double, Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), who as we know from the Season 3 finale was murdered in Charles’s apartment — dressed as (and presumably mistaken for) Charles himself. It can be a bit awkward when a show leaves its natural environment, and that’s true when the crime-solving trio heads to California. The characters feel out of place and so do we. Lucky for us, the action soon returns to New York and their Upper West Side apartment building, the Arconia, where they must try to track down Sazz’s killer.There’s cheeky fun in the big-time celebrities playing heightened versions of themselves, but the jokes about haughty famous people are also a little obvious. The most delightful guest turns come from the less-famous actors who play the zany suspects. Jin Ha, so great in “Pachinko,” is an adorably jittery screenwriter. Catherine Cohen and Siena Werber are gloriously eccentric film director sisters. There is also an eye-patch-wearing Richard Kind and other established character actors, like Daphne Rubin-Vega, who show up to cause chaos.“Only Murders” has become comforting in its rhythms. The writers have a working formula, and they use that formula well. But I’m really not watching for the mystery anymore — even though there are plenty of twists and turns this season. I’m watching to see who pops up next and how much they can make me giggle. More

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      Richard Kind Is Still Waiting for His Big Break

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      In a scene from the most recent season of the Netflix series “Girls5eva,” the character actor Richard Kind appears as a sort of guardian angel for one of the heroines, a member of a pop girl group. His advice to her: Don’t try to make it big. The middle is where you want to be.“I’ve spent the past 40 years striking the perfect balance between constantly working and never getting bugged in a deli,” he says.That’s not exactly true. During a recent lunch — not at a deli but rather at an upscale Mediterranean restaurant on the Upper West Side — a woman walked up and recalled something she had seen him in (a play in the Hamptons; she didn’t remember which one) and asked what he was doing next. He told her he was in the coming season of the Hulu mystery comedy “Only Murders in the Building.”He said this kind of thing happened all the time. Beloved by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Kind himself is down-to-earth and approachable. Sitting at a table trying to scoop the last bit of fruit out of his raspberry lemonade, he could have been any other hard-working New Yorker who would never let a quality bite go to waste. But his face, with its hangdog expressions, and his aggressively nasal voice were unmistakable.Richard Kind said he was told by an early acting teacher, “‘Hollywood doesn’t want you — you’re not a pretty face.’” Now he has close to 300 acting credits on IMDb.Danielle Amy for The New York TimesPut another way, he is a consummate Everyman who is also, if you can pardon the expression, one of a kind. He specializes the kinds of dads or colleagues many of us know well — boisterous, sometimes desperate men who are quick to anger and even quicker to flop-sweat. Offscreen, he has a workaday approach to his job that belies the glamour of his profession, and he talks often about the hardships of being a working actor even though he is constantly on television.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Amazon, Disney+, Hulu and More in August

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      “Batman: Caped Crusader,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “OceanXplorers” and “Only Murders in the Building” will be streaming.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of July’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Season 1Starts streaming: Aug. 1In 1992, the animator Bruce Timm cocreated “Batman: The Animated Series,” which appealed to kids and to older comic book fans with its combination of punchy crime stories, 1940s-Hollywood-inspired imagery and colorful costumed villains. Timm is back on the creative team (with Matt Reeves, J.J. Abrams, Ed Brubaker and others) for the new series “Batman: Caped Crusader,” which looks and feels a lot like the old show, albeit a degree or two more adult. Hamish Linklater takes the place of Kevin Conroy as Batman, channeling Conroy’s deep voice and dry humor for some episodic stories set in the early days of the superhero’s career, when the Gotham gangs are running the city.‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 2Starts streaming: Aug. 29This visually dazzling fantasy series returns for a second season, continuing to tell the story of how and why the magical and destructive rings in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” novels came into existence. Season 1 functioned a little like a mystery, as Middle-earth’s various races — elves, humans, dwarves, Harfoots and others — tried to determine what had become of the Dark Lord Sauron, who had torn their world apart and then disappeared. The villain’s whereabouts was revealed in the season finale; and now in Season 2, “The Rings of Power” will cover the ways his re-emergence sows distrust and dissension among the factions who once stood against him. This season will also bring in some bits of Tolkien lore unseen in “The Lord of the Rings” movies, including an appearance by the fan-favorite Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear), a very old and sublimely gracious soul.Also arriving:Aug. 1“Influenced” Season 1Aug. 5“Judy Justice” Season 3Aug. 8“60 Day Hustle” Season 1“The Mallorca Files” Season 3“One Fast Move”Aug. 15“Jackpot”Aug. 22“Classified” Season 1Aug. 26“No Gain No Love”Keith Kupferer (center, at head of the table) in “Ghostlight.”Luke Dyra/IFC FilmsNew to AMC+‘Ghostlight’Starts streaming: Aug. 30A critical favorite, this slow-burning drama is about a sullen, temperamental construction worker named Dan (Keith Kupferer), who makes a surprising, spontaneous decision to join a local theater troupe that is preparing to mount a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Inspired in part by the company’s resident diva, Rita (Dolly de Leon), and in part by the play’s themes, Dan begins to come of his shell after an extended period of grief that has also affected his relationship with his wife (Tara Mallen) and daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer). (They are also his actual wife and daughter.) The movie’s writing-directing team of Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson withhold the details of the movie family’s trauma for a while, so that the audience can first appreciate the power of theater for its own sake, before exploring the ways it can be transporting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Benj Pasek and Justin Paul Approach EGOT After ‘Only Murders’ Nod

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      Season 3 of the Hulu comedy “Only Murders in the Building” earned 21 Emmy nominations on Wednesday — adding to the 30 it had already amassed, along with four wins, for Seasons 1 and 2.But this season, the series could also produce an EGOT, the term for someone (or, in this case, someones) who has won all four major entertainment awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. When the 76th Emmy Awards air in September, the songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will have a chance to check off the E, having received a nod for best outstanding original music and lyrics for their tongue-twisting ditty “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”The series’s third season switched things up by moving much of its action to Broadway. Pasek and Paul, as along with a supergroup of Broadway collaborators, were brought aboard to write music for the new episodes. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who won Tonys for “Hairspray,” were also writers of the Emmy-nominated tune.The other awards contributing to Pasek and Paul’s potential EGOT came from their work on the comedy-drama film “La La Land” (a best original song Oscar for “City of Stars”), the stage musical “A Strange Loop” (a best musical Tony, as producers) and the musical “Dear Evan Hansen” (a Tony for best original score and a Grammy for best musical theater album).A running bit on the most recent season of “Only Murders in the Building” sees the former TV star Charles-Haden Savage struggle to perform “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” He finally gets through it in the eighth episode, “Sitzprobe,” but the actor who plays him, Steve Martin, nailed it within two hours, according to the songwriters.A win for Pasek and Paul would make them, as a duo, the second EGOT winners this year. Elton John joined the club in January when he won an Emmy for outstanding variety special for his live-streamed farewell concert.The episode “Sitzprobe” has also popped up in several other categories in this year’s Emmy nominations, including outstanding guest actress in a comedy series (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and outstanding contemporary costumes for a series. More

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      30 Shows to Watch This Summer

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      Returning favorites include “The Bear,” “House of the Dragon” and “Only Murders in the Building.” Among the new arrivals? Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman.It’s dangerous to draw conclusions before all the evidence is in, but a long look at the roster of new and returning series this summer might convince you of the primacy of what my colleague James Poniewozik has identified as “mid TV.” A lot of pleasure, in the form of audience-tested favorites and star-studded new shows. Not a lot of adventure or experimentation or risk.Of course, TV has never had much of those qualities — we’re talking marginal differences here — so don’t feel guilty strapping in for something that sounds comfortable. Here are 30 possibilities over the next three months, in chronological order; all dates are subject to change.‘Presumed Innocent’David E. Kelley’s new adaptation of the Scott Turow legal thriller — following the 1990 film — has an enticing cast: Jake Gyllenhaal as the prosecutor suspected of murder, played originally by Harrison Ford; Ruth Negga and Bill Camp as his wife and his boss; as well as Elizabeth Marvel, Lily Rabe and Peter Sarsgaard. The victim, originally Greta Scacchi, is played by the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve, star of Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.” (Apple TV+, Wednesday)‘The Boys’The popular anti-superhero action-fantasy returns; Season 4 reunites the showrunner, Eric Kripke, with one of his “Supernatural” stars, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. (Amazon Prime Video, Thursday)A scene from Season 2 of the “Game of Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon.” Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) is king, but for how long? Ollie Upton/HBO‘House of the Dragon’HBO executives heaved a dragon-sized sigh of relief in 2022 when the network’s “Game of Thrones” prequel was a big success (averaging 29 million viewers across all platforms in its first season). Now they just have to do it again. (HBO, June 16)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Podcasters as TV Heroes? We’re All Ears

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      Why have podcasters emerged as the rumpled protagonists of numerous television shows? We’ll discuss after the break.Gilbert Power, a public radio veteran and the host of the podcast “On Record,” went to a small town in Ireland to make a show about a 20-year-old missing-persons case. The podcast, he explained, was meant to be “a bit of fun, something to listen to on your drive home. I didn’t understand then how much power a story actually has. But stories can change us.”Gilbert, played by a grinning Will Forte, is the lightly inane hero of “Bodkin,” a seven-episode series that premiered last week on Netflix. And as the fictional host of a fictional podcast, he has plenty of onscreen competition.In the past five years, podcasters have emerged as the rumpled protagonists of numerous television shows (“Based on a True Story,” “Truth Be Told,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “Alex Inc.”) and films (“C’mon C’mon,” “Vengeance,” “Monolith,” “Bros”). Even the trendsetting Carrie Bradshaw was onboard; in “And Just Like That…,” she moved from print journalism to the advice podcast “X, Y and Me,” before going solo.Some of these works are comedies, some dramas. Many of them involve one or more mysteries in homage to or parody of true-crime podcasting. In these shows and movies, podcasters fill the roles once occupied by journalists or amateur sleuths, as tyros desperate for answers. These protagonists are often bumbling, and their relationship to ethics is distinctly off-and-on. But characters like these help fulfill a very particular fantasy: that we can tell the truth while also telling a good, possibly even powerful, story. And maybe land a mattress sponsorship while we’re at it.From left, Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin in “Only Murders in the Building,” which revolves around a true-crime podcast.Patrick Harbron/HuluWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch the Golden Globes 2024: Date, Time, Streaming

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      Hollywood usually looks to the annual awards as a party, but this year they also have an unlikely mission: A bid for relevance.The bar for a successful Golden Globes is usually low: Did at least one winner crack an acceptance-speech joke they’d probably regret the next day? Was there unpredictable political pontificating? Was the champagne still flowing into the wee hours?But then a Los Angeles Times investigation in 2021 revealed that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the eccentric, cloistered nonprofit of about 85 journalists that voted on the Golden Globes for some seven decades, had exactly zero Black members. The event has spent the last two years undergoing a reboot: The H.F.P.A. was dissolved. Private ownership took over, and new leadership was hired.This year, the Globes are back on TV, in their normal Sunday-night slot. (NBC didn’t broadcast the event in 2022, and last year’s pared-back Globes were booted to a Tuesday night because of football.) Now they’re on CBS, and a diversified voting body of more than 300 entertainment journalists has chosen the winners and added two new categories. (Oh, and they also found a new way to nominate Taylor Swift.)Will it be enough to win back audiences? (The 2023 Globes had about 6.3 million viewers, down 10 percent from the last televised Globes ceremony in 2021; by comparison, the Oscars draw about 19 million viewers.) Will the A-listers show up? Will the ceremony be a nod to the boozy, freewheeling affairs of old or play it more strait-laced like last year’s sober — some said, “boring” — ceremony?We’ll find out Sunday night. Here’s how to watch.What time does the show start, and where can I watch?The ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. CBS is the official television broadcaster.Online, you can watch the show live on the CBS app, which is free to download, though you’ll need to sign in using the credentials from your cable provider. The show will also stream on Paramount+, though only subscribers who have the Showtime add-on will be able to watch live. For those who do not, the ceremony can be streamed beginning Monday on Paramount+. There are also a number of live TV streaming services that offer access to CBS, including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV and FuboTV, which all require subscriptions, though many are offering free trials.Is there a red carpet?Variety will stream red carpet arrivals beginning at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, 3:30 p.m. Pacific on its website and social media platforms as part of the official Globes preshow, which will be hosted by the Variety journalists Marc Malkin and Angelique Jackson and the “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent Rachel Smith. You can also watch on ETonline.com or the Golden Globes website.Who is hosting?The comedian and actor Jo Koy, who has released multiple Netflix specials and starred in the comedy movie “Easter Sunday” in 2022, will take the reins for the first time.Who is presenting?The lineup of actors, comedians and musicians who will hand out awards includes Amanda Seyfried, America Ferrera, Angela Bassett, Daniel Kaluuya, Florence Pugh, Gabriel Macht, George Lopez, Issa Rae, Julia Garner, Justin Hartley, Michelle Yeoh, Oprah Winfrey and Will Ferrell.Who votes on the awards?With the H.F.P.A. dissolved, an expanded group of more than 300 entertainment journalists from around the world is now responsible for selecting the nominees and winners. And the Globes have promised it’s a much more diverse group that now includes Black voters.What’s new this year?The Globes introduced two new categories, one for stand-up comedy on television and the other for blockbuster films — defined as those taking in at least $100 million at the domestic box office and $150 million worldwide (hello, “Barbie”-”Oppenheimer”-“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” showdown).With the exception of the blockbuster category, which has eight slots, the categories now have six nominees each, up from five. In other words, more stars to populate the televised ceremony and the red carpet spectacle.Who is nominated?“Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s live-action take on the popular doll, leads the pack with eight nominations, including three in the original song category. (Yes, “I’m Just Ken” made the cut.) Close on its heels is “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour blockbuster biopic about the theoretical physicist who led the effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. It’s up for best drama, director and actor, among other awards.On the TV side, it looks to be a big night for “Succession,” which ended last spring and earned a record nine nominations. The audience favorites “The Bear” and “Only Murders in the Building” picked up five apiece.What should you watch for?“Oppenheimer” will be looking to bolster its case at the Oscars with wins here in the best drama and director categories. But don’t count out “Killers of the Flower Moon,” whose female lead, Lily Gladstone, could become the first Indigenous performer to win best actress in a drama.Among the TV nominees, Meryl Streep, who is up for best supporting actress in a comedy for her role as the actress Loretta Durkin in Season 3 of “Only Murders in the Building,” could break her own record for the most Golden Globe acting wins with a victory (this would be her ninth statuette). Ali Wong, who played a successful businesswoman drawn into a road-rage-fueled feud in the Netflix comedy “Beef,” could become the first actress of Asian descent to win best actress in the limited series category.And, if “Succession” wins best drama, it will tie the record for most wins in the category (currently held by “Mad Men” and “The X-Files,” which each have three).Will Taylor Swift be there?The singer picked up her fifth Golden Globe nomination, for her concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” thanks to the new blockbuster film category, but no word yet on her plans for the evening. Will the winners in the TV categories offer any hints about the Emmys next week?What a strange year: The dual actors’ and writers’ strikes that largely brought Hollywood to a standstill also bumped the Emmys from their normal September spot, even though voting took place in June. They’re now set to air after Jan. 15, even though the winners for the 2022-23 season were locked in months ago. Which is to say: Nope! More