Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Starring: Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez

Streaming on: Disney+ Hotstar

Seasons and episodes: 1 season, second in production. 10 episodes, 30 minute each

To watch or not to watch: A must watch, a mandatory watch

Arcadia is a posh Upper-West side New York apartment where Charles Haden-Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) live. The three bond over their mutual love for true-crime podcast, and don’t you know, there is a murder in their own building. They start their own podcast investigating into the death of Tim Kono. What follows is a series of twists and turns and hidden information surfacing about the three hinting towards nothing-is-as-it-seems. There is even a sly reference to popular sponsorships on podcasts.

The show owns up everything – how everyone is starting their own podcasts these days, the generation gap in communication and challenges faces by people after a certain age. Each episode ends in a cliffhanger, which makes you want more, but also, it is not a tease. This right here is art!

Mentioning the acting skills of Steve Martin and Martin Short is redundant – it is like saying the sun is bright. The real stars of the show despite this cast are the story, dialogue and screenplay. There is one episode in which the sequence of events are shown through the point of view of someone mute, and the whole episode did not have dialogues, or sound in general. That did not take away from the story – it was just weaved in. There is so much to admire. The colour palette, the music, use of graphics to depict textual conversation. But then we come to Selena Gomez. That’s the only gripe with the show – her dialogue delivery sounds like it is played in slow-motion and lacks the punch the wriiten word could have had. Also, her make-up makes her look dry and wrinkly. That’s it. The only negative thing about the show. A show after a long time makes life look better.