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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
123
Mixed:
15
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
SlashfilmSep 10, 2025
Season 5 Review:
Even the most irksome and overwrought moments of "Only Murders in the Building," even five seasons in, are still sort of charming, and a few jokes got genuine chuckles out of me across the nine episodes provided to critics. Still, I'm worried about this show's future, because it's truly just spinning its wheels at this juncture.
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The GuardianSep 8, 2025
Season 5 Review:
The podcast element falls by the wayside, the proportion of red herrings to genuine progress is off, the action is too often located outside the Arconia, and the core team are too often split up. .... It still has enough flashes of the old dynamic to keep us hooked and hopeful. Martin, Short and Gomez have not lost sight of their characters, and a course correction could easily be made for season six.
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RogerEbert.comSep 8, 2025
Season 5 Review:
All of these people are great comic performers, and the truth is that’s often enough with “Only Murders in the Building.” Again, it’s comfort food, something that goes down easily through a blend of breakneck plotting—there’s a new twist every episode—and remarkable starpower. Could it be better? Sure. But sometimes, good enough will do.
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Sep 8, 2025
Season 5 Review:
These side stories give you too much time to think, which means you spend more sussing out potential red herrings than paying attention to the action (Lester’s widow is played by Dianne Wiest, and heaven knows that nobody with a voice like that can be trusted in a murder comedy). And maybe this is all the point.
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LooperSep 8, 2025
Season 5 Review:
There's enough good stuff here, especially among the central trio (and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who guest stars once again as Detective Donna Williams) that it's worth watching. But even great shows have a tendency to move past their prime when they've been on the air long enough. I'm afraid that could be what's happening here.
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Screen RantSep 8, 2025
Season 5 Review:
The writers have got the formula down to a fine art: assemble all the suspects and persons of interest on the chessboard, shuffle them around with each new piece of information that comes out, and give the audience just enough clues to keep them guessing while they try to figure it out.
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Sep 8, 2025TV Guide MagazineSep 17, 2024
Season 4 Review:
The whodunit storyline is solid, with plenty of authentic twists and surprising revelations. But it's the character comedy that keeps us coming back. [16 Sep - 6 Oct 2024, p.11]
The Observer (UK)Sep 10, 2024
Season 3 Review:
Obviously, Only Murders… will be too soft-core/fluffy for some, but it manages to remind everyone that TV crime doesn’t have to mean 24/7 gritty realism and thinly veiled torture porn. If the murders are markedly less alarming than the jazz hands, that’s all part of the charm.
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Sep 4, 2024
Season 4 Review:
Outside of Steve Martin nailing that pitter-patter song last season, the show has struggled to reach the highs of its first go-around. Chalk it up to too many new cogs in the machine, a misplaced focus on celebrity cameos, or a misreading of the dynamics that actually make the show special—take your pick. But it begs the question: If Only Murders in the Building needed to step so far outside of the building to stay relevant, maybe we should’ve wrapped the show up after its first season.
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Aug 28, 2024
Season 4 Review:
There are too many suspects because there are simply too many high-profile guest stars and recurring players on this season of the Hulu comedy. .... And, to be fair, this collection of talent does at times yield strong results. .... More often, though, Season Four is too busy, and too focused on dynamics other than the durable one among the three leads, to be as satisfying as Only Murders is capable of being.
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Aug 28, 2024
Aug 27, 2024
Season 4 Review:
“Only Murders in the Building” is still one of TV’s best comforts. It may take a while to find its stride (which it does, by the seventh episode) and lack any addictive hooks like last season’s surprise Broadway banger “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” But it still gives us plenty of motive to stick with it, overwhelmed though we may be by its amplified dazzle.
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Aug 27, 2024
Season 4 Review:
“Only Murders” has become comforting in its rhythms. The writers have a working formula, and they use that formula well. But I’m really not watching for the mystery anymore — even though there are plenty of twists and turns this season. I’m watching to see who pops up next and how much they can make me giggle.
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Aug 27, 2024
Season 4 Review:
It’s wonderful to see Only Murders return to such great form. There are even traces of an evolution: If you squint, you can see a manic and unhinged quality to some of the jokes and set pieces that feels distinctly new. But what’s truly welcome is how the show has recentered itself.
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iAug 27, 2024
Season 4 Review:
While there are still laughs – particularly involving Sazz Pataki’s stunt pals, Eva Longoria embracing life as a would-be super sleuth, and a getting-to-know-you montage involving Galafianakis and Oliver that’s borderline romantic – season four has a lot more heart, and it works.
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Aug 27, 2024
Season 4 Review:
At this point Only Murders In The Building rides on the chemistry among Martin, Short and Gomez, and in Season 4, that chemistry is well-established. We just hope that Charles, Mabel and Oliver are as much fun running around Hollywood solving murders as they are running around New York.
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IndieWireAug 27, 2024
Season 4 Review:
“Only Murders” Season 4 is still fun. It’s still funny. It’s still well-made and obviously well-acted. It’s even smart enough to steer attention back to our original trio in a way that leaves no doubt who we’re meant to care about the most. It’s just a little too enamored by everyone it can cast to realize maybe it would be better not to cast everyone just because it can.
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Aug 27, 2024SlashfilmAug 26, 2024
The TelegraphAug 26, 2024
Season 4 Review:
The pace dips somewhat toward the middle of the eight episodes and there isn’t nearly enough Streep. But there are lots of twists – including a cameo that Disney+ is keen to keep under wraps. All of which adds up to a killer season from a streaming sensation that has taken on a life of its own.
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Aug 26, 2024
Season 4 Review:
While Season 3 spit the trio apart as they each got pulled in their own directions, this season finds them stronger than ever. As they work together to solve this case, they bounce back and forth in hilarious and zany ways, allowing Martin, Short, and Gomez to really thrive beside one another. And they continue to elevate the series’ newest additions as well.
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Aug 26, 2024
Season 4 Review:
At its core, it’s two veteran comic actors having a great time, and Selena Gomez happy, comfortable, and loving every minute of it. A year from now, I’ll probably be back reading this very text trying to jog my own memory about where we left off and wondering just how much juice Only Murders has left. And then I’ll tune in happily for another season.
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TV Guide MagazineAug 10, 2023
Season 3 Review:
Only Murders is more a team effort, and the new season struggles at times with a split focus between putting on a show and solving a crime. The backstage shenanigans are great fun, though, and the guest casting raises to a new level. [14 Aug - 3 Sep 2023, p.6]
Aug 9, 2023
Season 3 Review:
[Streep's] performance and Rudd's meld with that of the rest of the excellent cast. .... All these moments compensate for the softer corners this season manifested in the usual physical farce and misdirects, and the questionable choice to make Andrea Martin's Joy as campily vivacious as she comes across. Ultimately, however, that matters less than the vibe weighing on our trio.
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Aug 9, 2023
Season 3 Review:
While season three’s premiere is jam-packed with nuggets about the case, it never loses focus away from the comedy. The one-liners and banter continue to flow smoothly between Charles, Mabel, and Oliver.
[The score is the average of the grades for the first two episodes.]
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Aug 9, 2023Aug 8, 2023
Season 3 Review:
The first eight (of ten) episodes of Only Murders in the Building Season 3 left me feeling decidedly “meh.” Sure, you can’t really snub your nose at Meryl Streep bantering with Martin Short — even I have to admit that watching the show’s stars collide is worth the price of admission — but the storytelling kept letting me down.
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Aug 8, 2023
Season 3 Review:
Does the third season, of which I’ve seen eight episodes, go on too long, like so many streaming shows these days? Probably so. But there’s such warmth afoot, in our cross-generational Mod Squad and in the fun that all the cast members seem to be having. Along with silliness, the show has heart.
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Aug 8, 2023
Season 3 Review:
It’s no longer a surprise that Gomez enjoys such unlikely platonic chemistry with Martin and Short, or that Hoffman and Martin keep finding new ways to expand their characters’ insular world. It is a surprise, and a pleasant one, to see how that expansion takes shape, and who stops by to help fill the space.
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RogerEbert.comAug 8, 2023
Season 3 Review:
There are just certain parts of the entertainment experience missing in Season Three, which is strange to say given how much fun its wacky musical numbers can be. Mostly by its own design, it's just not as funny, and it’s not heartbreaking as its reflection-heavy mood wants to be.
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Aug 7, 2023
Season 3 Review:
If the new season isn’t as funny as it should be — don’t get me started on various characters brought back from earlier seasons with diminishing returns — and it isn’t as mysterious as it could be, why is it still entertaining enough for a tepid recommendation? Because, as I said up top, it plays effectively as drama.
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IndieWireAug 7, 2023
Season 3 Review:
A TV series that revolves around its characters putting on a Broadway show demands to be a showstopper in and of itself. “Only Murders” pulls it off. Anyone who sees Season 3 and doesn’t walk away convinced that the actors deserve a share in its success, well, you’re clearly one of the would-be thieves.
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Aug 4, 2023The TelegraphJul 27, 2023
Season 3 Review:
The play’s the thing, and when you’re having this much fun, the show says, who’s going to get pernickety about plotholes? Because if Only Murders is anything, it is splendid fun. There is something delectably arch about the whole thing, a piece of well-worked stagecraft that nonetheless feels unorthodox at a time when so much TV takes itself so very seriously.
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Jul 27, 2023
Season 3 Review:
There’s not enough time spent on solving the mystery at the center of season 3 of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, leaving the characters disconnected and pursuing thinly developed relationship plots. While the show still delivers some strong performances from this season’s guest stars Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep, it’s lost sight of what made the first two seasons of the true-crime spoof so compelling.
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The PlaylistJul 27, 2023
Season 3 Review:
The addition of great guest stars this year gives each of the leads new character beats to explore. Even the case this season feels less made-up as it goes along than it did in season two, which ended with something of a thud in its final reveal. Most of all, season three doesn’t feel like a repeat of the first two, amplifying the strengths of those seasons in a way that allows the performers to shine again.
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Jul 27, 2023
Season 3 Review:
It’s not that Season 3 of Only Murders is anything close to bad — it’s just that they’ve shown us in previous seasons how great this concept, and the chemistry within, can be. By separating the cast as much as the show does, a touch of that magic is missing. Even so, we have a murder to solve, people, and we do have a bright new crime scene to explore. The show goes on, and this show is still worth tuning in for.
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Jun 30, 2022
Season 2 Review:
“Only Murders in the Building” mashes up high comedy and carefully observed human moments and Season 2 is a continuation, and deepening, of that. All three leads are aces at this, and the show is directed with a particular appreciation for Short’s symphony of facial expressions.
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iJun 29, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The characters are more lived-in, their quirks more fleshed out, and the concept of the show feels more assured – we start to find out more about Oliver’s background through flashbacks, and Mabel’s chance at finding love gives a new dimension to her moroseness. But this character-building doesn’t distract from the show’s main plot and fortunately, season two dives straight into the whodunnit.
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Jun 28, 2022
Season 2 Review:
This season sends their investigation in many different directions, none of which adequately gel enough on a first pass to make the whodunit's mechanics the season's main talking point. ... If you missed this show more for sentimental reasons as opposed to the sleuthing... oh baby, does it feel wonderful.
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Jun 28, 2022Jun 27, 2022
Season 2 Review:
If what you want from “Only Murders” is to watch its characters do more of the same things that made you laugh the first time around, then the new season is a good time. But — like many of TV’s attempts to turn what felt like a completed story into a multi-season saga — it does not send its investigation in a whole new direction.
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The Daily BeastJun 27, 2022
Season 2 Review:
[The second season] isn’t as playfully meta as its predecessor. Yet in every other way, it’s as mysterious and witty as before. A fast-paced whodunit that captures the spirit of New York City and its colorful denizens and diverse communities, it’s a pure delight, led by a Short performance that reconfirms his standing as the funniest person alive.
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Jun 27, 2022
Season 2 Review:
It’s mostly for the best that they’ve decided not to fix what wasn’t broken.So, aside from the fact they’re now trying to clear their own names—and Mabel’s in particular—fans can expect more of the same charming, intergenerational citizen-detective stuff they fell hard for last summer.
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Jun 27, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Not every subplot works — there’s a storyline involving Charles that makes him seem naïve, even for a self-involved TV actor — but each episode of Season 2 has at least a couple of scenes that are pure comedic gold, thanks to that sharp writing and memorable triple-threat of Martin, Short and Gomez.
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Jun 24, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The good news is the show’s second season, streaming Tuesday, is more like the back half of season one: funnier and more involved because we’re dealing with established characters and because the writers, led by showrunner John Hoffman (“Grace and Frankie”), have a firmer grasp on the show’s tone and a more confident hand in its plotting.
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Jun 20, 2022Jun 20, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Only Murders’ second season feels more like a seamless continuation of its first rather than a whole new case, which—along with the show’s incredible sweaters, coats, and sports jackets—adds to the overall cozy and familiar feel. Essentially, everything you loved about the first season is still fully intact here, and while not perfect, it’s still a charm and a half.
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