Review: FOUL PLAY is a fun improv that needs better pacing

A few weeks ago, the new interactive murder mystery series Unfairplay It was launched. The series comes from TBD Theatricals and each part of the 5 part anthology series features different actors including Gaten Matrazzo (Stranger things) AND Michael Urie (Ugly Betty) by participating in a differently themed murder mystery. Plus, each episode is loosely improvised to create some great comedic moments. The next episode to be released is The Dark Curse of Savion Sunguard on May 12 with a live preview at 9 PM EDT. THE Unfairplay The team was kind enough to give me access to the first episode Murder at Vanguard Mansion and I wanted to share my thoughts on the experience and I will do my best to keep spoilers to a minimum.

When the case begins, all the suspects will be together in one room minutes before a murder is about to occur. Once they disperse, Foul Play becomes an interactive game, giving the viewer full access to surveillance cameras in four rooms, each with three different camera views, allowing them to click, follow different suspects, overhear conversations, and gather clues. Foul Play is loosely improvised and every sneaky conversation happens in real time, so the viewer is encouraged to stay eagle-eyed and follow the story threads that are the most suspicious. Or they can just click and follow their favorite character – it’s totally up to them!

In Unfairplay, each episode seems to have an outline laid out for what is going to happen, but then the different actors are given free rein to improvise most, if not all, of their lines and some aspects of their characters. For example, after the murder takes place in Murder at Vanguard Mansion, a detective shows up, announces his name as something like Bibble D. Bop, and becomes a joke because of how ridiculous he is. It seems the other actors didn’t know it was going to be his name. I have no issues with this format and overall it works really well for storytelling while providing highly comedic moments.

Another plus for Unfairplay it’s that the actors are all good at what they do and very capable. For the most part, I’m able to stay in character and I never thought any of them were bad actors. In fact, you can tell that everyone involved had a good time and seemed quite friendly with each other, which is especially good in improv in my opinion.

Unfortunately, there were a few aspects that really hurt Foul Play in my opinion. First, the episodes (or at least Murder at Vanguard Mansion) are too long. I think it came to about 90 minutes and it seemed slow. One of the keys to improv in my opinion is speed, but by the time you spend about 30 minutes getting to the murder mystery party murder, everything seems to have dragged on. Then, they take about an hour to solve the murder which, again, feels very slow given the format. I think keeping it to a much tighter 45 minutes (1 hour max) would have greatly improved my experience. Likewise, there were a couple of moments where not everyone seemed to be on the same page. There’s a moment where a character walks around telling everyone it’s talent show time and then about 5 minutes later they have to go back and tell everyone again it’s talent show time. Something like this is easier to look past for me when the show feels a lot tighter, but it was just slow.

Another aspect I wasn’t a fan of was the ways you interact with the show. Basically, you as the viewer can choose at any time which of the four available rooms you want to look at, and within each room there are three camera angles to choose from: one that follows who is speaking, one that is basically a long shot of the room , and then a third black and white camera with a different angle. I found this interactivity mostly useless in all honesty. This means it’s very easy to miss potentially key moments, and there are also several times where you can see other cameras (but not hear them) and see a person sitting there basically doing nothing. I can understand what they were looking for. They wanted it to be a thing where you pick where you go and weigh the risks of who to follow, but again, because the show felt so slow, I didn’t really feel like I missed it much. The idea is that you have to click around to see the various reasons characters help you solve the mystery, but I personally didn’t feel like it did a good job of keeping me engaged. The additional camera angles were also something I hardly ever used because every time I used them there was nothing new to gain.

I would have liked the interactive elements to actually feel more interactive in all honesty. There’s also a button labeled evidence, but it doesn’t do anything until the detective actually solves the case at the end and lists all the evidence. I wish there had been a notepad I could have used to make notes about the different characters, or a checklist of things to pay attention to, or pretty much anything.

After watching Murder at Vanguard Mansion of Foul Play, I wished there was no interactive element at all and wished it was about half as long. I liked the characters. I liked a fair number of jokes. There is a character who thinks the cult should worship Kelsey Grammer instead of Henry Winkler and that was legitimately funny to me. The show has simply lost steam because it’s improv that thrives on speed and they drug it.