A distinctly average TV show called Only Murders in the Building is back, and I couldn’t be happier. The Disney+ drama, the second season of which launched on 28 June, stars Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez as three amateur sleuths investigating – you guessed it – a murder in their New York apartment building. It is, to be honest, fine – and that is all it needs to be.
You see, Only Murders falls into a sub-genre of television that could be termed “chicken soup viewing”. Chicken soup shows are not thought-provoking or controversial, they do not need trigger warnings and they do not keep you up at night – quite the opposite. Chicken soup shows, as the term suggests, are programmes we watch when we need a break from the horrors of modern society, politics and sexist old white men telling women what to do with their bodies. Other chicken soup shows include Gilmore Girls, Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek. These programmes are not necessarily adored for their riveting plotlines but for their breeziness, and their character relationships that keep us coming back for more. In many episodes of these shows, nothing at all happens, and that’s also fine.
