Is Only Murders in the Building still worth watching?

Five seasons, 56 Emmy nominations and a sixth run relocating the whole cast to London: this comedy-mystery is nowhere near running out of road yet.

Across five seasons, Only Murders in the Building has collected 56 Emmy nominations and seven wins, which is a remarkable haul for a show whose premise is three lonely neighbours making a podcast about a corpse. It has also just been handed a sixth season that ships the entire cast to London.

Three neighbours, one podcast, no qualifications whatsoever!

Steve Martin plays Charles-Haden Savage, a washed-up TV detective who can't quite separate the role from himself. Martin Short is Oliver Putnam, a Broadway director whose career peaked decades ago and who has never once let that slow him down. Selena Gomez plays Mabel Mora, decades younger than both and the only one of the three with any real instinct for the work. The age gap between the leads is the engine of most of the comedy and quite a lot of the warmth.

They live in the Arconia, a grand old Manhattan apartment building, and every season a resident dies in a way the police handle badly. The trio record their podcast about it, get things wrong repeatedly, and stumble into the answer anyway. Co-created by Martin himself with John Hoffman, who also runs the show, the whole thing is built on the gap between how true-crime podcasts sound and how badly these three actually investigate anything. A month of the subscription costs about what one cocktail runs at a decent bar, which is a low bar for ten episodes of this.

Here's a practical note worth knowing before you start!

This is a Hulu original in the United States, and Hulu doesn't operate outside America. In most other territories the entire show sits on Disney+ instead, filed under the Star hub, which is where international viewers will find it.

- All five seasons are available in one place rather than scattered across services.

- Episodes run around half an hour, so a season is genuinely watchable across two evenings.

- A VPN sorts out access if you're travelling or in a region where the listing gets awkward.

Who turns up in each season?

The guest casting has become the show's signature move. Season three brought in Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd and pulled 21 Emmy nominations, still the show's best single-season haul. Season four went to Hollywood with Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, Melissa McCarthy, Zach Galifianakis and Molly Shannon, and that ensemble won two Screen Actors Guild awards, with Martin Short taking Best Actor in a Comedy on his own.

Season five went further still, investigating the death of the Arconia's beloved doorman Lester with Renée Zellweger, Christoph Waltz, Logan Lerman, Keegan-Michael Key, Téa Leoni, Bobby Cannavale, Nathan Lane, Dianne Wiest and Beanie Feldstein all in the mix. Michael Cyril Creighton's Howard remains the quiet MVP of the whole building, and Keegan-Michael Key's mayor turned out to be at the centre of the season's answer.

Does the London move actually make sense?

More than it sounds like it should. Hoffman has talked about wanting to trace the detective story back through Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle to modern podcasting, and shifting to London puts the show in the genre's original home ground.

The season five finale set it up by revealing the next victim: Cinda Canning, Tina Fey's rival podcaster, the character whose success pushed the trio into doing this in the first place. Ten episodes have been ordered, and the announced London guest roster reportedly runs from Olivia Colman to two former Doctor Who leads and a former Spice Girl.

Save the first season for a weekend when you want something warm rather than punishing, because that's what this show actually is underneath the murders. If you like a mystery that keeps quietly rearranging who's telling the truth, His & Hers works a similar seam with far less comedy attached. See what people who are already watching are saying in the comments on my website: https://en.altertv.site, and https://en.altertv.site sets out which service carries what if you're deciding where your money goes.

Selena Gomez said last year she wants to keep playing Mabel as she gets older, which is the right instinct. The murders are the excuse. Three people who'd otherwise have nobody to talk to is the actual show.