Pssst, want to check out Murderville in our new look?
Information
- Year
- 2022
- Runtime
- 33 min.
- Director
- -
- Genres
- Crime, Comedy, Mystery
- Rating *
- 7.0
- Votes *
- 0
- Checks
- 58
- Favs
- 1
- Dislikes
- 1
- Favs/checks
- 1.7% (1:58)
- Favs/dislikes
- 1:1
Top comments
-
Siskoid
As a three-decade veteran improv player and teacher, I certainly have thoughts about Murderville, but not entirely positive ones. The concept is amusing enough. In each of the six episodes, Will Arnett plays a deadpan police detective (very much a Will Arnett character) who takes on a new partner played by a celebrity guest star who then helps him solve a murder. But the guest-star hasn't seen the script and must improvise their way through the story. So it's sort of a hybrid between Who's Line Is It Anyway and murder mystery games. Fine. My beef is that it's TOO scripted, with situations and even lines forced on the guest regardless of what they might want to do. Much of the comedy derives from what I call improv traps, i.e. situations that force the guest to make a fool of themselves. I get that this is how the production is ensuring that the one-take episode is entertaining no matter what, but it means a lot of fooling around rather than building towards something. The formula is pretty much always the same. The guest is interviewed by Arnett's Terry Seattle and seem to have essentially been told to be themselves rather than a character. Then the murder is explained and there are invariably three suspects to interview, leading to a reveal that owes more to reality TV than Agatha Christie's drawing rooms. Many of the sequences are overtly based on silly improv games (which I personally find hack) like "sell a product" or "lines out of a hat" (in this case, Terry whispering in your ear). I find that disappointing. Maybe some guests needed more structure - none of the six are necessarily known for improv - but I felt it quashed the potential of those who were more adept at plot construction (like Marshawn Lynch and Sharon Stone who would be my star players if I coached these guys are a team) as they jumped through hoops designed to make them the butt of the joke. If it had been me in there, I would have WRECKED THINGS UP and really forced the regular cast to PLAY. I thought Ken Jeong was going to be that spoiler, but he corpsed through the whole thing and let it play out. They obviously have to keep it loose just in case, but I could see the railroad tracks under each episode pretty clearly. If Arnett is good at one thing, it's setting you up to set him up, and while that can be fun, it's not good improv. 2 years 2 months ago