Maya Rudolph and Jason Bateman improv a holiday homicide in the trailer for Murderville's Christmas special
Rudolph, Bateman, and series star Will Arnett have to improvise their way through finding out Who Killed Santa Claus?
It’s been nine months since Netflix released the first season of Will Arnett’s improvised murder mystery show Murderville, which means it’s been about eight months since we started seriously craving more of it—a very silly and delightful show about making celebrities uncomfortable by asking them to improvise their way through fully fictitious fatalities, without having access to the script that the rest of the perfumers are working from.
Luckily, Christmas is coming (ever so slightly) early this year, as the streamer released the trailer today for the show’s upcoming holiday special, Who Killed Santa Claus?, featuring not just one, but two celebrity guests who don’t know what the plot of the murder they’re supposed to be solving is: Maya Rudolph, and Arnett’s long-time buddy and Arrested Development co-star Jason Bateman.
This is, obviously, an extremely good combination of personalities to throw at the sort of silliness Murderville typically traffics in; we genuinely can’t wait to see Bateman and Rudolph bumble through the case alongside Arnett’s Detective Terry Seattle, and also almost certainly fuck up naming the culprit who put a big ol’ candy cane through Santa’s chest. (Or will they ascend to the rare ranks of the Conan O’Brien and Annie Murphys of the world, and actually deduce the killer from a series of “How To Host A Murder?” style clues?)
Who Killed Santa Claus? is set to arrive on Netflix on December 15. The streaming service has so far refused to announce a second-season renewal of the show, because they hate us. The series, which also featured episodes with Marshawn Lynch, Sharon Stone, Kumail Nanjiani, and Ken Jeong, is based off a British show, Murder In Successville, that ran for three seasons in the UK.