Hulu’s latest series is Agatha Christie meets TikTok (in a good way)
Give me a murder mystery, but make it Gen Z.
That seems to be the brief assigned to FX and Hulu’s “A Murder at the End of the World,” an Agatha Christiestyle locked-mansion murder mystery with a 2023 glow-up that includes billionaires, artificial intelligence, climate change, hacking, a serial killer, Reddit and maybe the end of the world.
But amid all the shiny trappings and 2023 buzzwords, “Murder” (streaming Tuesdays on Hulu) ends up being a rather satisfying – if occasionally slow – whodunit, anchored by a talented cast including Emma Corrin (“The Crown”), Clive Owen, Harris Dickinson (“Triangle of Sadness”) and Brit Marling (“The OA”).
“Murder” takes place in two timelines. In the present, young Darby Hart (Corrin), dubbed the “Gen Z Sherlock” after she found a serial killer and wrote a book about it, is invited by tech billionaire Andy Ronson (Owen) to an exclusive retreat in remote Iceland. Among the rich, famous and brilliant, Darby feels out of place until she sees a fellow guest: her ex, Bill (Dickinson), a Banksy-like activist/artist. In flashbacks, we learn that Bill helped Darby find the serial killer who made her semi-famous, but the pair parted on unhappy terms.
Of course, the murders aren’t all in the past. At Andy’s retreat, bodies start dropping and Darby is compelled to find the truth, uncovering the conspiracies, secrets and evils of the unimaginably wealthy in the process. The series hits all the beats you might expect in our current moment when capitalism isn’t particularly cool with the kids. Owen’s not-so-subtle Elon Musk homage vacillates between sinister and smooth, a man who can have everything but yet is so far from grasping what he really wants. The actor is masterfully cast; he plays with Andy’s pent-up rage and deploys a devious gaze in his every appearance. Marling, as a hacker-turned-housewife to Andy and mother of their precocious 5-year-old son, is as ethereal as ever.
But it’s the kids who really make “Murder” an alluring thriller. Corrin and Dickinson are an exceedingly appealing pair of up-and-coming young actors to center the series, and there are moments when you might wish the narrative to linger in the flashbacks of Darby and Bill’s citizen investigation of the serial killer rather than the messy detective work in Iceland. Corrin made her name playing a young Princess Diana, and she surely learned from that experience how to make the audience fall in love with her characters.
“Murder” was created by the otherworldly team of Marling and Zal Batmanglij, who are behind Netflix’s unnerving “OA,” and fans of their work will be rightly suspicious of the mostly by-the-books murder mystery the series at first appears. There is weirdness hidden here, and the series needs it. Although the premiere and finale are enthralling, the series drags in Episodes 2 and 3, and could have gotten the job done in six or even five installments rather than seven.
The world has changed since Agatha Christie’s day, with our smartphones, social media and other technology, but the formula of locking a bunch of characters in a house (or billion-dollar hotel) and setting a murderer loose on them remains winning drama.
Corrin just happens to solve this one with an iPhone and pink hair instead of Hercule Poirot solving it with his handlebar mustache.