Three residents of a New York City apartment complex join forces to investigate the suspicious death of a neighbour.
This is an enjoyable and smart take on a whodunnit. It is built around performers having fun with their roles, and peppered with commentary about genre storytelling and about the media industry.
The first episode opens with the three leads introducing themselves via voiceovers showing their points of view on life in the city. Then we see their unknowingly shared ritual of consuming a particular podcast presenting true crime investigations. This was an efficient and entertaining way to set up their motivations, as well as foreshadowing their probable roles in the investigation to follow.
Martin Short gets the showiest role as an out-of-work producer. He seizes on the death in their building as an opportunity to get his name on something - namely their own home-studio true-crime podcast. His self-absorbed manner includes carelessly casting shade in the guise of directorial commentary.
Selena Gomez defaults to restraint in her performance. That contrasts effectively with the delight she shows in the moments when the trail heats up. When she shares such delighted moments with her fellow snoops, that makes the trio feel like insiders sharing a secret adventure. Note this effect is part of the appeal of true-crime stories, such as the podcast the trio are obsessed with, and is a hook for the audiences for this show.
The episode's production showed some cinematic flourishes throughout, but near the close of the episode it goes all out. Elegant special-effects fantasies are used to represent the characters' subjective reactions to breakthroughs. For example, free-falling joyously from the top of a stair, then bouncing weightlessly all the way back up. Such moments mean that the filmmakers have greater stylistic ambitions than your typical crime procedural potboiler assembled from static dialogue scenes.
The only real shortfall for me was Steve Martin's character. He is a semi-retired celebrity who has mixed feelings about losing both his A-list status and his anonymity. Such feelings are not too different to Steve Martin's reported ambivalence about his own career. Martin co-wrote this show, and I wonder if the joke is there for Martin more than for the audience. The bulk of the show is pending so there is plenty of time to reverse that impression.
