It's Been a Long Time Since We've Had a Show Like 'A Murder at the End of the World'

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 16, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 16, 2023 |

It’s been a long time since there has been a legitimately good television mystery series that could not be immediately spoiled. Because of the need to adapt IP, most mystery series are based on novels (see Jennifer Garner’s The Last Thing He Told Me). While many of them are very good (don’t see Jennifer Garner’s The Last Thing He Told Me), they’re not as fun if we can spoil ourselves by immediately reading the novel or finding a plot summary online.

Likewise, if it’s not based on an existing novel, a streaming outlet like Netflix will dump all the episodes in one day, depriving the Internet of the ability to communally solve it over several weeks. The >True Detective seasons were fun for this very reason, and the last major murder mystery we got to watch unfold every week may have been Mare of Easttown. I understand Deadloch on Prime Video was this type of show, but it never caught on. After Party on Apple TV+ existed in this space, too, except that it was a comedy and the murder mystery was secondary.

However, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s A Murder at the End of the World, which premiered on FX/Hulu this week, is the show many of us have been waiting for: One we can try to solve! Not only is there an Agatha Christie-like murder mystery involved, but it plays out in a reclusive billionaire’s secluded retreat. Also, it has that offbeat Brit Marling vibe, although through the first two episodes, it’s significantly more straightforward than The OA.

Here’s the setup: There are two timelines. In one timeline, Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) is the daughter of a detective and an amateur sleuth who solves cold cases with Bill (Harris Dickinson), a guy she met on the Internet with whom she became intimate. The promos keep calling Darby Gen Z’s Sherlock Holmes, which I find annoying.

In the second timeline, Darby and Bill are no longer together (for reasons that are not yet clear), and they are both invited to the retreat along with several of the world’s leading thinkers. Darby, a true-crime memoirist, and Bill, an artist, seem out of place, making it clear that they were invited not by the billionaire Andy (Clive Owen) but by his wife, Lee (Brit Marling). It’s the first time that Darby and Bill have seen each other since breaking up; in the interim, Bill appears to have had a relationship with Lee at some point.

On the first night of their retreat, Bill and Darby reconnect. Bill asks Darby to come back to his room, but when she does, she discovers that he’s been murdered. In the secluded area, there aren’t many suspects. Meanwhile, because it’s how murder mysteries typically operate, Bill and Darby’s previous investigations are probably related to his current murder.

Who killed Bill?

It’s too early to make even an educated guess — everyone seems suspicious, especially the billionaire and his wife — but that’s not the point. The point is, we television viewers have a case to solve! There will be posts, Reddit threads, and video essays trying to solve Bill’s murder. I cannot wait to participate. It helps that, besides the occasional tin ear, the writing and performances in A Murder at the End of the World are stellar — it’s a stop on the way to superstardom for both Emma Corrin (Princess Di in The Crown) and Harris Dickinson (Triange of Sadness), who are lined up to star in Deadpool 3 and Steve McQueen’s Blitz, respectively. My quibble is that it’s only a seven-episode series, and the first two aired this week. We only have five more weeks to figure it out.