The Afterparty TV Review

PLOT: A genre-defying series centered on a murder mystery at a high school reunion. Each episode explores a different character’s account of the fateful evening in question, all through the lens of popular film genres and unique visuals to match the storyteller’s perspective.

REVIEW: The murder mystery comedy is not a new concept on the big screen or the small and last year’s Only Murders in the Building proved that the genre was still ripe for long-form programming. Now, AppleTV+ has its own whodunit from the creative mind of Christopher Miller (21 Jump Street, The LEGO Movie) who makes his solo directorial debut with this eight-episode series featuring an all-star cast and one of the most inventive approaches to storytelling in quite some time. The Afterparty is a hilarious dark comedy that not only plays with the convention of the mystery genre but of all genres.

Told Rashomon-style, the series opens with the death of Xavier (Dave Franco) and the arrival of Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) who asks all of the witnesses to recount their own “mind movie” of the events that transpired. That affords each episode the ability to focus on one particular perspective. This means each episode shifts from stories that are everything from romantic comedies to horror to musicals to animation, depending on the way the person telling it feels. The Afterparty ends up working like eight unique films brought together as one project. As each episode unfolds, it becomes very clear that point of view can alter events drastically and therein lies a lot of the fun of this show.

The Afterparty began development years ago as a feature film titled The Reunion. Christopher Miller, who directs all eight episodes, expanded the concept with a writing team that includes his long-time creative partner, Phil Lord. There are also multiple actors who have worked with Miller and Lord over the years, including Haddish (The Lego Movie 2), Will Forte and Mel Rodriguez (The Last Man on Earth), and Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street). There are also great turns from the cast that includes Ilana Glazer, Ike Barinholtz, Zoe Chao, Jamie Demetriou, and Ben Schwartz. The standouts of the cast include Haddish and Chao who both upend expectations by making their characters far more than stereotypes, especially Haddish whose Detective Danner is a shrewd investigator who could go toe to toe with Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc from Knives Out.

Sam Richardson is by far the star of this series. Richardson highlighted HBO’s Veep as well as the second season of Ted Lasso in supporting roles before stepping into the lead in last year’s Werewolves Within. His comedic timing is impeccable but his everyman quality makes him a very likable leading man. Christopher Miller makes great use of the cast as they recount their various tales with Ben Schwartz’s Yasper a hilarious focal point and Ike Barinholtz’s scorned Brett a notable villain. Dave Franco continues the trend of famous faces who play murder victims and his Xavier is an easily hateable character who could have been murdered by any number of people, making this investigation all the more fun to unfold.

Each episode offers the same scenes from different vantages which makes it all the harder to decipher who is telling the truth and who is lying, but it also reminded me a lot of cult classic mystery comedy, Clue. It could get stale seeing the same thing in slight variations more than eight times, but Christopher Miller manages to keep things fresh and the shifting genres make you dissect each scene similar to how Danner has to weed through the lies to find the truth. With only the first seven episodes made available for this review, I still don’t know who actually committed the murder even though I have my own theories. That alone makes this a success in my eyes and makes me want to go back and rewatch it again.

The Afterparty is a new type of mystery that centers on a group of friends in the mid-30s who are very different than the cast of classic Agatha Christie mysteries like Murder on the Orient Express. This show is much more relevant to 21st-century audiences and plays wonderfully with the conventions of various genres. I had a blast watching this show and laughed through every episode, especially the animated entry and the high school flashback episode that pays homage to everything from Can’t Hardly Wait to American Pie and more. Christopher Miller has created a truly hilarious murder mystery, something I never expected to write. This is a great show that I expect people to be buzzing about over the weeks to come.

The Afterparty premiered with three episodes on January 28th on AppleTV+.

Afterparty

AMAZING

9