Absurd comedy series have gotten more prevalent in the era of streaming services — and few of them have a more ridiculous concept than Murderville on Netflix. The murder mystery featured a rotating cast of celebrities helping Will Arnett’s fictional cop Terry Seattle solve crimes. But the weirdest thing about the show was that no one in Murderville‘s world seemed remotely concerned that grossly unqualified actors and athletes were being assigned to murder cases.
In the show’s universe Senior Detective Terry Seattle was the go-to guy for Chief of Police Rhonda Jenkins-Seattle, despite the fact that he was generally incompetent and largely unprofessional. It also didn’t help that he was fixated on the unsolved murder of his partner, Lori Griffin, who appeared only as a photo of Jennifer Aniston. Her memory haunted him throughout the first season, contributing greatly to his overall uselessness.
In Murderville‘s first episode, Rhonda showed up in Terry’s office with his new partner, who turned out to be late-night talk show legend Conan O’Brien. He had apparently joined the police force as a detective of some kind. Together, the duo investigated three different murder suspects and Conan had to select the culprit using the clues he was provided at the beginning of the case — in a combination of mystery and middling improv.
Conan was only the first celebrity; each episode featured a different actor or athlete playing themselves while helping Terry investigate another suspicious death. Murderville had an interesting roster. After Conan, there was Marshawn Lynch, Kumail Nanjiani, Annie Murphy, Sharon Stone and Ken Jeong. While they were hilarious (especially when they couldn’t keep a straight face), why these famous people were helping solve murders was never made clear.
At no point in Murderville did anyone ever explain why someone would bring in Conan O’Brien or Sharon Stone to do police work. They weren’t researching a role for a movie or TV series, which would have been the easiest possible answer. The fact that this explanation might have made actual sense would have been antithetical to the premise of the show. It’s not exactly overflowing with common sense, because it’s not supposed to be taken seriously.
But at the same time, the fact that anyone would voluntarily bring the constantly laughing Ken Jeong in on a serious case doesn’t even come close to plausibility. Even more strange was the fact that none of the celebrities seemed to know why they were there, either. They just kind of showed up, put on a vest, and worked with Terry on whatever murder mystery they were assigned — then they were gone by the next episode. So the series couldn’t even frame their appearances as a potential career change.
Oddly enough, the only person who came close to questioning the common sense of the entire situation was Terry Seattle himself. But it was more because he didn’t want a new partner in the first place, not because he realized how having famous assistants should’ve stuck out like a sore thumb. Even though Murderville‘s famous partners existed purely to entertain viewers with how much they didn’t know, it would’ve been even better if the show had at least tried to give them some credibility.
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