In 2015, the murder-mystery docuseries genre blossomed and hijacked the zeitgeist like few others. Fresh off the success of the podcast Serial, HBO’s The Jinx capitvated and shocked audiences up to the last seconds of the show, and now Netflix’s Making a Murderer seems to be all anyone is talking about. Well if you’re a fan of the genre, you may be happy to learn it will continue to live on, albeit in an unexpected place: the next season of Arrested Development.

A fifth season of the brilliant comedy was never a guarantee, and indeed creator Mitch Hurwitz designed the show’s fourth season/revival on Netflix as the prelude to an eventual feature film. But it appears the Arrested Development movie isn’t in the cards—at least for right now—and so Hurwitz and Co. are forging ahead with a further season of the series on Netflix.


arrested-development-season-4-david-cross-jason-bateman
Image via Netflix

So why is it taking so long? Well apparently real-life keeps intervening with the story ideas Hurwitz is assembling. Per a conversation with Deadline, Hurwitz initially planned on making Jeffrey Tambor’s George become a woman, changing the dynamic of his relationship with Jason Bateman’s Michael, but Tambor’s critically acclaimed turn on the Amazon series Transparent shelved that idea.

Hurwitz is currently zeroing in on the main storyline for Season 5, which will be a murder mystery involving what occurred in the Season 4 finale, and it will be in the vein of the buzzworthy Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, of which Hurwitz is a big fan. He has the season outlined but won’t begin writing the scripts until he knows for sure which castmembers are available. Given their busy schedules, putting together the contracts for Season 5 has been tricky, so the availability of the actors will impact the execution of Hurwitz’s outline.

But the Arrested Development creator is trying his best to get the show finished and ready before the November Presidential election, given that the political world has also influenced where we find the Bluths in Season 5. He’s hopeful he can make that happen, so now we wait to hear which actors are signed on to return. I understand it’s tough to make this show given how busy and famous all the actors are, but here’s hoping the CG utilized to combine actors in the same scene is executed a little better this time around. Season 4 was a bit, well, disjointed.

making-a-murderer-netflix-image-2
Image via Neflix