Have you ever been shadowed at work? Or observed during an interview? We often find it uncomfortable to be watched.
This is the predicament that the three protagonists in the latest season of the hit TV comedy drama series Only Murders in the Building find themselves in. In Season Three, amateur detectives Mabel, Charles and Oliver learn that their true-crime podcast is being made into a Hollywood movie. As they begin solving yet another murder, they also end up being shadowed by the three actors hired to play them in the film.
These actors copy their every move – their fashion sense, their gait, their nervous habits. And as the series progresses, we see Mabel, Charles and Oliver uncomfortable with the version of themselves being reflected back to them. Mabel is portrayed as sad, Charles as worried and boring. Memorably, the actor playing Oliver says to him:
Three lies of British culture
I am not a social scientist, statistician, or expert in trend analysis. I have no qualifications in psychology or anthropology. …