Murderville has left some viewers confused. The Netflix comedy, starring Will Arnett’s (Arrested Development) detective character Terry solving murders, features celebrities playing themselves and has caused many a scratched head in the process. So is Murderville real, or is it a scripted and improvised show?
Is Murderville a real show or scripted?
Murderville may not provide viewers with much of an explanation behind why Will Arnett is enlisting celebrities to help him solve murders, but the show is completely improvised. This means that it’s not scripted, and very much features celebrities’ real reactions to the events transpiring on screen.
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The show is actually an adaptation of a British hit series, the BBC Three sitcom Murder in Successville. Like Murderville, that show features its lead actor Tom Davis working solving cases with plenty of improv comedy, albeit with the celebrities portrayed by impressionists.
In Murderville, the celebrities play themselves, starting with Conan O’Brien in episode one. Other detectives-in-training range from Marshawn Lynch to Sharon Stone, with each not being given a script ahead of time and therefore dragged through a sequence of events they weren’t expecting. This includes Conan O’Brien having to explain a murder to a child, which goes about as well as one might expect.
Speaking to Consequence, showrunner Krister Johnson explained how this process came about: “So what we ended up doing was basically writing the scenes as we imagine they might go, but we didn’t write any dialogue for the guest. So where we feel like the guest might say something, it just says ‘guest responds,’ and that was often a character asking them a question or Will’s character Terry Seattle saying, ‘Come take a look at this. What do you see here?'”
Murderville is currently available to watch on Netflix.
