Way back in 2021, when we were still being locked down and quarantined every so often, a nifty little television show with an odd title (and strange premise) appeared: “Only Murders in the Building.”

That first season was truly unique. We had a murder mystery in the heart of an old apartment building in Manhattan that engaged three strangers as they worked to solve the whodunit, all the while recording it for a podcast! Lonely New Yorkers Charles (Steve Martin), Mabel (Selena Gomez), and Oliver (Martin Short) are pretty isolated folks despite living in a huge city. Oliver is a failed Broadway producer who loves to eat dip; Mabel is an artist haunted by past trauma; and Charles was once the star of a 1990s action TV series whose life, and career, are in decline.

Michael Bird is an assistant professor of music at Faulkner University.

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