With the explosive popularity of the documentary series Making a Murderer, Netflix has quickly made a name for itself as a destination for fans of murder mysteries. Years before it released the real-life crime drama, though, it had another original series with a murder mystery: Arrested Development.
Netflix revived the cult comedy favorite for a fourth season back in 2013, marking one of its first forays into the area of original programming. The 15-episode season followed the various members of the Bluth family in their separate-but-intertwining plotlines, and those plotlines all culminated in a series of events that resulted in Buster Bluth being arrested for the murder of neighbor Lucille Austero.
According to Deadline, the development of Buster being arrested is where season 5 will start off, with a murder mystery to ensue. While this seems pretty timely given the popularity of Making a Murderer and other real-life dramas such as the Serial podcast and HBO’s The Jinx, that timeliness was apparently just a coincidence. In fact, a number of other coincidences forced series created Mitch Hurwitz to rewrite some of season 5:
“Because of the delay of Season 5 over cast schedules, Hurwitz will have to discard some story ideas. For instance, he had long envisioned that George, played by Jeffrey Tambor, would become a woman, changing the dynamic of his relationship with Michael. In light of Tambor’s acclaimed performance as Maura in Transparent, that is no longer in the cards. (Hurwitz at one point even had planned to have George as a mute woman, which happened to be a disguise used by The Jinx‘s Robert Durst.) There was also Bluths’ idea to have the Mexicans pay for the wall, which has been usurped by Trump.”
Arrested Development has always had its hand on the pulse of the hottest issues of the day, from the burst of the real estate bubble to the plight of never nudes. It sounds like some of the plotlines in season 5 were a little too close to reality (or other television series) for comfort, but hopefully the season will be produced soon enough to ride the crime-drama wave. Whether or not that happens is mostly dependent on which actors are available, according to Hurwitz.
Screen Rant will keep you updated with more news regarding Arrested Development season 5 as it’s made available.
Source: Deadline
