Only Murders in the Building season 5: NYC filming locations to visit
Planning a city break in the Big Apple? Here are some must-see gems to pack into a long weekend.
Cole Porter may have made a song and dance about Paris in the spring time, but I’ve always had a thing for New York in autumn. What’s not to love, with the oaks turning bronze in Madison Square Park, and the Japanese zelkova trees deepening to purple along the upper reaches of Broadway.
There’s an added reason to be in a New York state of mind this September. Hit comedy Only Murders in the Building (OMITB) returns to Disney+ for a fifth season. As before, it stars Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short as friends who live in a palatial apartment block, the Arconia. In each series, a grisly murder takes place in the property, which the three – keen sleuths who even begin their own crime podcast – set out to solve.
Visually the drama is life-affirming, a love letter to the city’s rich, bohemian, art-loving Upper West Side, where so much drama unfolds that the best verdict I’ve read by a reviewer of the series is that it feels as if “Nora Ephron had made a murder mystery.”
Mood-wise, it’s quintessentially Ephron (creator of screen romances When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, known for its saccharine denouement atop the Empire State); Woody Allen, too, come to think of it (see 1977’s Annie Hall, with Diane Keaton), only with corpses.
The plot line may be fanciful, involving, in this series: “a dangerous web of secrets connecting powerful billionaires, old-school mobsters, and the mysterious residents of the Arconia,” but OMITB is a beautiful salute to the megawatt screen magnetism of Manhattan, bathed in autumnal light, with locations you could build your own long-weekend NYC itinerary around.
I love almost everything about New York, having been lured back repeatedly by its rollicking nightlife and laid-back neighbourhood food scenes in the East, West and Greenwich villages.
There’s the thrill of on-and-off-Broadway theatre and the photo-appeal of the seasonal farmers’ markets in squares and parks, piled high with fruit and veg in traffic-light colours. Best of all I love its architecture: that inimitable after-dark cityscape of diamond lights and charcoal-black skyscrapers; and Manhattan’s trademark turn-of-the-20th-century neoclassical edifices with their pediments and columns, recalling the buildings of the Ringstrasse boulevard in Vienna – on steroids.
There’s no need to be an architect anorak to enjoy all this masonry, but seeing it is crucial to the NY experience. Simply wander and gape, from Harlem down to the Lower East Side. For full OMITB appreciation, you’ll want to stay on the Upper West Side, so check in locally, at Hotel Belleclaire, a slab of Secessionist whimsy cut with Art Nouveau, where Broadway meets W77th Street.
Alternatively, there’s The Lucerne, a regal brownstone a block or two away or, for special-occasion indulgence, the Mandarin Oriental on Columbus Circle , towering over the copper foliage of Central Park. Now step out into the Upper West Side and explore.
For starters there’s the fictional Arconia building, home of the OMITB protagonists. A real property called the Belnord, it has hogged a whole block at the corner of W86th Street and Broadway since 1909, with its grand fountain visible through golden gates. You can’t go in, but you can admire the muscular might of its Italian Renaissance Revival walls and windows: 14 storeys of elegant limestone, brick and heavy cornice-overhang.
Close by, at 129 W81st Street, fans of Seinfeld can pay homage at the facade of Jerry’s fictional apartment (sets in LA were used for the interiors). Ditto the frontage of Will Truman’s pad from sitcom Will & Grace: crane your neck, point and shoot at 155 Riverside Drive.
Among other famous Upper West Side buildings is the American Museum of Natural History, which is essential viewing for October half term holidaying families: there’s even a Night at the Museum self-guided tour linking the real exhibits behind the characters featured in the celebrated movies. Spot the blue whale dangling on high, and the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic have their home at the nearby Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts. Cubic, avant-garde and airy, its facilities make up a spectacular display of mid-century modernism: a must-see for devotees of architects Philip Johnson and Eero Saarinen.
Autumnal highlights include a performance by Andrea Bocelli. While in the neighbourhood you might take time to honour the memory of John Lennon, who was murdered 45 years ago this December outside the Dakota building, where he shared an apartment with Yoko Ono.
Strawberry Fields, a memorial area of plants, pathway and stones, including a mosaic in tribute, lies just across the way in Central Park. While a sombre place to wander and remember, it was devised to be a living landscape that changes over time. Sit awhile then head on into the New York dusk where, with extraordinary energy, life goes on.
Only Murders in the Building season 5 is airing now on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK, with new episodes released weekly. Seasons 1-4 are available to stream on Disney Plus – sign up to Disney Plus from £4.99 a month or £89.90 a year now.
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