Murder in Successville, which ran on BBC Three from 2015-17, was one of the more innovative British comedies of the past decade. A hybrid of sitcom, reality show, spoof and grand-scale prank, it starred King Gary’s Tom Davis as DI Sleet, a homicide detective who was helped by a different celebrity sidekick each week. The twist: the celebrity was not given the script, forcing them to improvise, under Davis’s deliberately off-putting tutelage, through a torrent of ridiculous interactions with suspects, culminating in them being asked to identify the killer.
It was a startling flash of bottled chaos that deserves to be cherished. It doesn’t deserve the new US remake, Murderville (Netflix), which hacks off the concept’s eccentric rough edges, then makes a mess of the less interesting show that’s left.
