Only Murders in the Building: Season Three

Featuring original music from the composers of La La Land, Waitress, and Hairspray (Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman), the third season of Only Murders in the Building’s sports a trailer that appears purpose-built to tease a so-called “musical episode”. (It’s part of a broader focus on Broadway as a theme for the season, or so it appears).

Indeed, on the very first string upbeat we see someone drop dead on a musical’s stage—and with it, a very jazzy score that wouldn’t be out of place in the aforementioned musicals. Notice that we get synch points early on, with the ambulance’s siren coinciding with the brass flourish at the six-second mark. The running string music cuts at eight seconds for a brief, humorous aside before returning with an ascending violin arpeggio and then some ticking to elicit intrigue and tension, a descending cello motif in response at 0:16. This notably coincides with a lower-register voice in the off-screen monologue. We get another glimpse of the Broadway stage at 0:22 before we see and hear another synch point as the violin aligns with an all-hands-in moment between the protagonists.

At 0:30, as the exposition begins more in earnest, we hear a more frenetic, energetic theme emerging in the lower strings alongside the ticking motif. As we’ve commented on with some frequency, it’s lately a favourite stylistic element for trailer music arrangers as a way to invoke intrigue in short order. We hear it even as series mainstays Charles, Oliver, and Mabel run down their suspects on a corkboard.

At 0:58, after Steve Martin’s character’s quip, we see the release date title card (“this summer”), the violins redouble their noirish, minor-key resolve—literally, shifting from eighth notes to sixteenths, another favourite technique of trailer music arrangers. Something we haven’t yet heard in many—or any—trailers arrives at 1:11, when the music drops out, but the ticking sound remains as another one-liner is delivered. Usually, the entire soundtrack would drop out. This is arguably a send-up of the ticking motif itself—letting it run even through an explicitly tension-cutting moment, displaying a refreshing self-awareness. The remainder of the trailer continues in a similar track, with the arpeggiated strings motif repeating between a variety of comedic one-liners peppered throughout, undoubtedly to cash in on the popular characters. Additional synch points, such as the sandbags dropping on the beat at 1:34, help round it out and maintain some variety, and the musical intensification for the montage suggests the conclusion of a concerto by Vivaldi. Notice also the synch of the starring actors’ title card to the beat. The trailer ends with two comedic dialogue snippets sans music that it’s hard to determine which is the obligatory turn phrase to signal finality.

As the trailer explicitly teases Shaiman and Whitman’s involvement, we’re left wondering to what extent the music at the beginning of the trailer represents what they’ve come up with—which is undoubtedly the point. For now, the arpeggiated strings motif serves well in its stead.

Season Three of Only Murders in the Building hits streaming on August 8th.

— Curtis Perry