Breaking character to laugh at in-scene jokes is a time-honored tradition in improv comedy. While veteran comedians know how to power through a laugh, even Saturday Night Live cast members are known to corpse a take when something goes just right...or very wrong. Netflix's new improv murder mystery show Murderville is no stranger to these moments of character breaking, where stars and guests alike cannot seem to contain themselves. In fact, these moments may be the funniest parts of the entire series.
Murderville follows veteran comedian Will Arnett's Senior Detective Terry Seattle as he solves a series of murders. Each episode sees Seattle teaming up with a brand new trainee detective, played a celebrity guest actor who doesn't know the script and is thrown into increasingly more absurd situations by Arnett. Forced to try to gather clues while responding to antagonistic improv prompts, the guest stars consistently fail to remain in character.
The trainee detectives are most prone to scuttling the scenes. Unaware of Arnett's planned antics or what the show has set up for them, and often not being trained improv actors, the guest stars reflexively react to the moments with laughter. These instances that break the fourth wall and take viewers out of the drama make it hard not to laugh along. While Annie Murphy sometimes has difficulty responding to Arnett's over-the-top character, watching her cheeks puff up to contain a laugh while wearing a fake mustache or turning her laugh into a cough as she screams “The Feds!” in a mafia accent are small moments of physical comedy that make the episode land.
These character-breaking moments happen in every episode. One of the funniest moment's of Conan O'Brien's performance is his disbelief at how impressed Arnett is with a magician, which he thinks shouldn't garner that much interest. Kumail Nanjiani's genuine laugh when Arnett claims not to know the word "cadence" sets the tone for his episode and his snort-laugh when pulling evidence out of a corpse's mouth is delightful. Even the extras fall victim to the show's weird comedy; when Sharon Stone and Arnett play with a corpse’s nipples, the dead body shakes with silent laughter.
Some of the funniest moments, however, are when Arnett can't contain himself. When the veteran improv artist genuinely reacts to a guest's surprises, it's both a sign that the moment was surprisingly funny and a reminder that the show isn't on rails. After Nanjiani comes up with a guttural caw sound to accompany his ugly walk, Arnett is so taken aback that he has to quickly cover his mouth to hide his laugh from the camera. The scene was already working, but watching Arnett break character makes it seem even funnier.
Not everyone in Murderville breaks, however. Marshawn Lynch is remarkably good at taking Arnett's foolishness and running with it, while Stone enters with such confidence that she pushes back against it. Neither episode is the worse for their commitment to the scenes, however. Murderville's final episode with guest star Ken Jeong is the opposite, featuring almost nothing but breaks. Sometimes the full cast has to bail Jeong out of a scene as he finds himself unable to deliver lines while laughing too much. At one point, Arnett even mimes the famous "straight-face" motion to help encourage Jeong to keep it together.
Murderville's improv may not be the cleanest, but the show draws its strength from these failures. Each moment where the actors can't contain their own enjoyment at the absurd situations they're placed in makes the episode funnier and funnier. Murderville is at its best when the actors forget the conceit and just make each other laugh.