‘Only Murders in the Building’ Set for ABC Run

ABC is taking up temporary residence at The Arconia.

The network will air the first season of Hulu’s critically adored comedy Only Murders in the Building in January. The season will run in two-hour blocks on Tuesday nights over three weeks starting Jan. 2, with a one-hour slot for the season finale on Jan. 23.

ABC will also move Celebrity Jeopardy! to Tuesday nights for its final episodes of the season, starting with a semifinal on Jan. 2. The game show will air at 8 p.m., followed by Only Murders at 9 p.m. The two-hour blocks on Jan. 2, 9 and 16 will contain three episodes each.

The moves will help ABC fill its schedule ahead of the return of its homegrown scripted series in February. Will Trent, The Rookie and The Good Doctor are set to occupy Tuesdays starting Feb. 20, but the network hadn’t previously announced any programming for the first few weeks of 2024. (What will air in the three weeks after Celebrity Jeopardy! and Only Murders finish is still to be determined.)

Production on dozens of scripted series has restarted following the end of strikes by writers and actors, but ABC’s first shows back won’t arrive until early February. The network’s current Tuesday anchor, Dancing With the Stars, finishes its season next week and will give way to holiday programming and repeats for the remainder of December.

The rental of Only Murders at ABC is similar to what CBS has done with Paramount Network’s Yellowstone and Paramount+’s SEAL Team in the fall, helping fill out primetime lineups affected by the strikes. Yellowstone in particular has performed solidly on Sundays for CBS, averaging a bit more than 5 million viewers in the post-60 Minutes slot, including seven days of delayed viewing.

Only Murders in the Building isn’t a hit on the Yellowstone level — few things are — but it is one of Hulu’s more popular series. It stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as three residents of a Manhattan apartment building who become friends while investigating and making a podcast about the death of another resident. The first season ran on Hulu in 2021 and earned three Emmy Awards, including a guest acting win for Nathan Lane.

The show comes from 20th Television; Martin and John Hoffman created Only Murders and executive produce with Dan Fogelman, Jess Rosenthal, Jamie Babbit, Short and Gomez. ABC, Hulu and 20th are all part of Disney.