Only Murders in the Building has the best apartment building on TV, but people keep dying in it

polygon.com:

Even with the overwhelming wealth of TV shows premiering every week, it’s rare to find one as fully formed as Only Murders in the Building. Hulu’s comedic murder mystery/true-crime podcast spoof arrived with a clear identity from minute one: a well-established comedy duo in stars Steve Martin and Martin Short; a surprising and fun third wheel with the addition of Selena Gomez; art direction inspired by The New Yorker magazine covers brought to life with a playful score by composer Siddhartha Khosla; and a target for its loving satire in true-crime podcasts and the people who listen to them. But most formidable is its skill in conjuring a whole world out of a single building, and how pleasant it is to inhabit that world for 30 minutes at a time.

Only Murders in the Building is set in the Arconia, an apartment building in Manhattan’s wealthy Upper West Side neighborhood. Its denizens are drawn from Old New York archetypes — cosmopolitan boomers with spacious apartments and well-stocked bar carts, interest in highbrow art, and an expectation that their well-cultivated idiosyncrasies be tolerated by all. It’s the sort of place where the presence of Fran Lebowitz, who built a career as an author before transitioning to Professional New Yorker, is both vital world-building and a highly targeted joke.

In its first season, Only Murders in the Building followed washed-up actor Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), disgraced theater director Oliver Putnam (Martin Short), and subletter Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez) as they bond together over suspicion that a dead resident’s alleged suicide was actually a murder — and start a podcast to chronicle their amateur investigation. Across 10 episodes, the series pulled double duty, both