Who killed Santa? A Murderville Murder mystery review: Jason Bateman joins Will Arnett for unfunny special

The Netflix holiday special of Murderville guest stars Jason Bateman, Maya Rudolph and Pete Davidson.

Jason Bateman and Will Arnett in a still from the special

Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery

Story: Santa has been stabbed to death at City Hall, hours before the Mayor is to distribute gifts to a bunch of orphans. Homicide division detective Terry Seattle (Will Arnett) is called in to investigate the crime, along with not one, but three trainees played by Jason Bateman, Maya Rudolph and Pete Davidson, respectively. Can they get to the bottom of this mystery and salvage Christmas for the young ones after all?

Review: When Murderville Season 1 came out earlier this year, the excitement to watch it came from its leading man, Arrested Development’s Will Arnett. The show, a torturous six episodes long, had Will play a goofy Homicide detective called Terry Seattle, who’d be saddled with a celebrity as partner to solve a crime. Unlike the rest of the cast, the celebrity, though, would not be given a script to play off and had to come up with impromptu responses, among others. On paper, the whole Improv comedy style seemed interesting, but the show was nothing close to that. It was cringey and I couldn’t wait for it to finish, even though the celebrity guests were Conan O’Brien, Marshawn Lynch, Annie Murphy, Kumail Nanjiani, Sharon Stone, and Ken Jeong.

So, when Murderville’s holiday special Who Killed Santa? Dropped, it was a moment of dread. I’d have to watch Will in action again. This time around, he’s got Jason Bateman, Maya Rudolph and Pete Davidson as celebrity trainees to aid him in the investigation. A star quarter-back is pretending to be Santa for the Mayor’s big gig, but gets shivved soon enough. A candy cane that’s been licked to a pointy tip is the murder weapon. There are multiple suspects, including a sports reporter and the dead guy’s assistant. The special is silly from the word go, like, when Santa can’t play dead when the prospect of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is discussed or when a prime suspect does a locker-room interview in the buff, among others.

Jason Bateman and Maya Rudolph are not only great actors, but also have amazing comedic skills. Here, though, it feels forced and wasted and makes one wonder why they went through with it. Will keeps throwing insane situations at them to keep the improv party going and they play along well. But it hardly ever evokes a laugh.

Verdict: Early on, Will Arnett says that he can't imagine going further down than he already is. Oh hell, he does and so, I’ll say it again, anything to do with Murderville is a complete waste of time. Don’t even bother watching this one.  

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