A Wedding Is the Best Setting for a Murder Mystery
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Contrary to popular belief, the best setting for a murder mystery story isn't a dark and stormy night at a fancy-but-rundown mansion. Classic whodunnits, it turns out, are best suited to weddings.
"A wedding is a place where everyone gathers from different walks of life, from different intents, from different emotional places," Ken Jeong, who stars in season two of The Afterparty, tells Town & Country. "Is it not the most perfect scenario for some sort of murder mystery?"
John Cho, who also stars in this season, chimes in: "The real question is, why aren't there more murders at weddings?"
Apple TV+'s The Afterparty returns today with a two-episode premiere, wherein a groom, Edgar (Zach Woods), is murdered at his own nuptials. Soon, everyone is a suspect: the bride, Grace (Poppy Liu), the bride's parents (Ken Jeong and Vivian Wu), the groom's adopted sister Hannah (Anna Konkle), the best man Sebastian (Jack Whitehall), Grace's uncle Ulysses (John Cho), and Edgar's mom Isabel (Elizabeth Perkins), among others, are all under investigation. Setting out to solve the mystery are the bride's sister, Zo? (Zo? Chao), and her boyfriend, Aniq (Sam Richardson), who also featured in season one of the genre-bending comedy.
For Liu, who plays the bride Grace—the first character to be accused of murder—weddings are notable for bringing family secrets to the fore. "Weddings have so much drama in them," she tells Town & Country. "You're getting together family members who normally don't see each other. You're mixing together different groups of friends, different people's relatives, and in-laws... it's such a ripe place for drama to take place. Everyone's family secrets are ripe for the picking."
Much like in season one, which focused on a death at a high school reunion, each episode of season two re-tells the events of the night from a different perspective, in a different genre. Grace envisions the evening as a Jane Austen-esque romantic period drama, while Hannah's perspective looks like a coming-of-age Wes Anderson tale. Grace's ex Travis's POV is a film noir, and her dad Feng's story is told through a found footage treatment. Each episode will leave viewers guessing as to who actually did it. (This author, who has seen the nine episodes provided to media (episode ten was not shared), still has no clue.)
What makes the show so inventive is how the tragedy plays against what should be a joyous occasion. "A wedding is supposed to be one of the best days of your lives, I've heard," Konkle, who portrays Hannah, the groom's sister, tells Town & Country. "So for the unthinkable to happen, what could be more salacious? All of the dynamics at play before a wedding: Who spurned who and what mother-in-law left out the other, family wealth being split. I mean, the list goes on and on." As Elizabeth Perkins, who plays the groom's mother, notes, "You're already at the top of your emotional [capacity], and then throw in a tragic death—everybody overreacts, or everybody becomes very dramatic because the release of the emotion of all of it."
Murder mystery authors know that a wedding is a great setting—see The Guest List by Lucy Foley, Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jessie Q. Sutanto, or You're Invited by Amanda Jayatissa—but television hasn't fully explored the idea yet. There was Hulu's Wedding Season (2020), in which a groom's entire family is murdered at a wedding, and Harper's Island (2009) on CBS, a horror where guests are slowly killed off at a destination wedding, but few other mystery shows have been set at a ceremony or reception. (Though procedurals, like the long-running Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer Jessica Fletcher, often feature episodes at weddings.)
That's what makes this season of The Afterparty all the more special—and makes us hope for more wedding-set murder mysteries in the future. Though no murders at actual weddings, please.
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