Netflix is so often the home of compelling crime dramas. Murderville is not quite that. Instead, it’s an entirely different case that needs cracking: Will Arnett plays Terry Seattle, a detective who is tasked with solving a new murder every episode. The twist? Their partner is a real-life celebrity who has no idea what’s coming next and must use their powers of improv comedy to help uncover the suspect.
Starring Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct), Ken Jeong (Community), Marshawn Lynch (Westworld), Conan O’Brien (Conan), Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek), and Kumail Nanjiani (Eternals), each week features Seattle guiding the unwitting actor through a series of outlandish scenes, including undercover stings, autopsies, and crime scene investigations. At the end of each episode, they must decide whodunnit – and they aren’t always on the money.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Murderville is a US adaptation of BBC comedy Murder in Successville, which ran from 2015 to 2017.
Like that BBC hit, Murderville so often finds its funny bone by putting the celebrity partners in uncomfortable positions – often quite literally. In one moment from the new trailer, Ken Jeong is asked to mimic the chalk outline in a crime scene, while Sharon Stone – with an inexplicable heavy German accent – is splattered with blood in another.
If nothing else, we’ll soon discover who we want (and don’t want) solving our murders should we ever shuffle off this mortal coil.
