Murderville US has dropped the untranslatable celebrity impressions. Its homicides happen in a generic city to generically named characters. The local sweet shop isn’t owned by Sir Alan Sugar, nor does the local Italian restaurant belong to Bruno Tonioli. It’s all Kathy, Deb and Keith Nobody. While understandable, it’s a regrettable loss. Without the thrill of hearing that the next suspect for questioning in Lindsay Lohan’s murder is ballroom dancing granddad Len Goodman or football manager Arsène Wenger, there are many flat moments across the six episodes. Like trying to explain the glory of Sonia from EastEnders‘ trumpet to an outsider, it’s hard to convey the tingle one gets from hearing the names Angela Merkel, Tess Daly and Paul Hollywood spoken in the same breath. I’ll tell you this though, you absolutely notice when it’s not there.
What both series share is a solid comedy lead. Tom Davis is excellent in Murder in Successville as DI Des Sleet, an unpredictable combination of pathetic vulnerability and absolute psychopathy. Will Arnett is similarly strong in Murderville as man-baby-in-crisis Det. Terry Seattle. Both are at their best when pushing their celebrity sidekicks beyond their comfort zone and into corpsing chaos.
The relative standing of those celebrity sidekicks is another difference that doesn’t seem to work in Murderville‘s favour. The US show has reached for its celebrity guests straight from, if not the top, then at least the third-to-top drawer. The first six episodes feature Conan O’Brien, Sharon Stone, Kumail Nanjiani, Annie Murphy, Ken Jeong and Marshawn Wallace. In the UK series, Emma ‘Baby Spice’ Bunton was about as famous as it got. The UK guest stars were less likely to have IMDb pages than they were to appear in a reality show where they’d have, say, a week to train a Labrador to dance Torvill and Dean’s Bolero. You might see the UK lot grace the red carpet of ITV’s Pride of Britain awards, but unlike the US cohort, you’d never see them at the Oscars.
The sweet spot in a celebrity guest is someone either absolutely tuned in who can give the lead a run for their money (see: Richard Osman and Kumail Nanjiani) or somebody tuned into an entirely different frequency, but fully committed to the role (see: Chris Kamara, Deborah Meaden and Marshawn Wallace). Cast too experienced an improviser, like Conan O’Brien, and the whole thing comes off overly slick. Nanjiani is by far Murderville’s best guest star, and if you’re going to watch just one episode of the Netflix show, make it that one.
Another difference is the way the finger is pointed at the chief suspect at the end of the episode. In the US show, the celebrity simply picks their guy; in the UK version, the rookie cop shoots them or slips them poison. That somehow makes it even funnier when Gordon Ramsay/the chief of police shows up to say they’ve taken out the wrong perp and mistakenly wiped out an entirely innocent Harry Styles. In the US version, the national context likely makes cops shooting innocent people dead less of a gag.
Few TV comedies are as niche and idiosyncratic as Murder in Successville. Even fewer get laughs from its weird combination of UK-specific celebrity culture and crime drama tropes. There were always going to be casualties in moving this hard-boiled-detective-spoofing series to the home of actual hard-boiled-detective TV shows. Murderville isn’t without its moments, but a lot’s been lost in translation. The US version is slicker, with bigger stars and no doubt with a bigger budget, but it doesn’t have the same chaotic sense of barely controlled madness. Some things are so rooted in the soil they grew in, they can’t be exported without losing flavour.
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February 01, 2022 at 10:50PM
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Murderville: Will Arnett Improv Comedy Misses What Made the UK Original Great - Den of Geek
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