Season one of Only Murders in the Building introduces us to Charles, Oliver, and Mabel,
three residents of the affluent Manhattan apartment building the Arconia.
Charles is a semi-retired actor who starred in a popular detective series in the 90s called
Brazzos.
Oliver is a struggling Broadway director who can barely keep up with his rent.
And Mabel is renovating an apartment for her wealthy aunt.
The three residents are mostly strangers, but they do share one thing in common: they’re
all super fans of a popular true crime podcast called All Is Not OK in Oklahoma hosted by
Cinda Canning.
When fellow Arconia resident Tim Kono is found dead, police Detective Williams rules it a
suicide, but Charles, Oliver, and Mabel believe it to be murder.
They all witnessed Tim making a frantic phone call before his death, and when sneaking into
his apartment to look for clues, they find seemingly innocuous items like a stash of
sex toys as well as a more mysterious cache of jewelry.
And so, the three team up to investigate Tim’s death and start their own true crime podcast
called Only Murders in the Building.
When Oliver goes to his old associate Teddy Dimas to beg for money to help pay his rent,
Teddy agrees to sponsor the podcast.
As the trio investigate, they discover that many residents of the Arconia were happy Tim
died, as he was asthmatic and his death meant that residents were now allowed to use their
fireplaces.
One of the trio’s first suspects is music superstar Sting, a fellow resident of the
Arconia.
Tim was Sting’s stockbroker and lost him a large sum of money.
Sting confesses that in anger, he fired Tim and told him to kill himself.
The trio clear Sting’s name and comfort him that Tim didn’t kill himself and was
actually murdered.
Oliver’s adult son, Will, recognizes Mabel as having been close friends with Tim, a detail
Mabel had kept a secret.
It turns out, Mabel and Tim and their other friends Zoe and Oscar had all been fans of
the Hardy Boys book series and solved pretend mysteries together.
Years ago, the four friends attended a rooftop party where Zoe was later found dead.
Since Oscar had gotten into a heated argument with Zoe before her death, he was arrested
for her murder.
When Tim confided in Mabel that he saw someone else arguing with Zoe before her death, Mabel
ends their friendship, as Tim refuses to disclose this information to the police to exonerate
Oscar.
In the present, Oscar has been released from prison, making him the biggest suspect in
Tim’s murder.
While Charles, Oliver, and Mabel believe Oscar had a motive to kill Tim, he professes his
innocence and joins their investigation, eventually entering into a romance with Mabel.
Also joining the investigation, despite Mabel and Oliver’s objections, is Charles’ new
girlfriend and fellow Arconia resident, the professional bassoonist Jan.
As the trio’s investigation continues, their podcast becomes massively popular, even getting
mentioned by their idol Cinda Canning on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Due to this popularity, Teddy’s business sees a massive boost, and he pays Charles
and Oliver an additional $50,000.
And that’s when Charles and Oliver notice Teddy’s check is paid from an account named
“Angel”, the same name that Tim’s jewelry cache came from.
While investigating Teddy, the trio discovers that Teddy and his son Theo had been stealing
jewelry off of bodies at a funeral home.
It’s then revealed that Theo had had a crush on Zoe, but when she discovered the Dimas
family secret, he confronted her at the rooftop party and accidentally pushed her off the
roof, killing her.
Tim was the only witness to this crime, but was threatened by Teddy to keep quiet.
While Charles is out on a date with Jan, Teddy kidnaps Mabel and Oliver, threatening them
to stop their investigation, absolve the Dimas family, and end their podcast immediately.
Instead, the trio use their final episode of the podcast to detail all of the Dimas
family crimes and label them as Tim’s murderers.
Detective Williams begins looking into the case once again and realizes that Tim’s
death was caused by poison and that it couldn’t have been the Dimas family, as security footage
proved they weren’t in the Arconia the night of Tim’s death.
The trio retract their accusations of the Dimas family on their podcast.
The unwanted attention the podcast has brought to the Arconia leads to the other residents
voting to evict the trio.
Charles becomes disillusioned with the case and quits the investigation.
Mabel and Oliver aren’t ready to give up, and learn that Tim had a secret girlfriend
prior to his death.
They then realize that what they had originally thought were Tim’s sex toys were actually
bassoon cleaners.
It turns out, Jan was the murderer, killing Tim after they broke up.
Mabel and Oliver break into Jan’s apartment and discover that she has a whole box labeled
“Jan’s Lil Toxins” which she was going to use to gas the entire Arconia via the newly
reopened fireplaces.
The trio race to the Arconia’s basement to stop Jan and save the Arconia.
Mabel knocks Jan out and she is arrested for murder.
Having solved Tim’s murder and saved the Arconia, the trio celebrate their victory.
As Mabel leaves to get champagne, Charles and Oliver receive a mysterious text message
warning them to leave the building immediately.
As they go to warn Mabel, Charles and Oliver find her covered in blood, hunched over the
dead body of Bunny, the Arconia’s board president who had tried to get the trio evicted.
Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are then escorted out of the Arconia in handcuffs, the prime
suspects in Bunny’s murder.
And now, the trio found themselves as the main subjects of Cinda Canning’s newest
podcast: Only Murderers in the Building.