Oliver Putnam

Oliver Putnam is a flamboyant, perpetually optimistic Broadway director whose career has seen better days. Despite a string of catastrophic flops and mounting debts, Oliver maintains an irrepressible enthusiasm and theatrical flair that make him the energetic heart of the investigating trio. His apartment in the Arconia is a monument to faded grandeur, filled with playbills and memories of productions that ranged from the moderately successful to the spectacularly disastrous. Oliver's relationship with his son Will is complicated by years of prioritizing his career over family, adding emotional depth beneath his comedic exterior.

Oliver approaches the murder investigation — and the resulting podcast — as if he's directing the greatest production of his life, bringing dramatic instincts, showmanship, and an occasionally reckless disregard for personal safety to the enterprise. His chemistry with Charles and Mabel creates the show's comedic engine, with Oliver's bombastic personality bouncing off Charles's reserve and Mabel's sardonic wit. Martin Short delivers a performance of extraordinary comic energy while finding genuine emotional notes in Oliver's loneliness, his desire to be relevant, and his deep love for his son and his beloved bulldog Winnie.