The cast of Murderville cracks themselves up as much as they do the audience.

The limited series, which debuted on Netflix Thursday, has a fun gimmick to it: star Will Arnett plays Detective Terry Seattle, who solves homicide cases with the help of a new celebrity partner in every episode. Arnett and his regular co-stars are more or less working off a script, while his partners have to improvise their way through the entire show, down to solving the case given the clues they discover over the investigation.

There are six episodes, and the co-stars are Conan O’Brien, Marshawn Lynch, Sharon Stone, Kumail Nanjiani, Ken Jeong, and Annie Murphy. The rest of the regular cast (Haneefah Wood as Chief Rhonda Jenkins-Seattle, Terry’s soon to be ex-wife, Lillian Bowden as coroner Amber Kang and Phillip Smithey as Detective Darren Phillips) exist to keep the mystery moving along, dropping clues and letting the partners know whether they solved the case.

Every episode follows the same pattern: the new partner is introduced and a murder is announced. Terry and the new partner investigate, interviewing suspects and witnesses and gathering clues. Seattle engineers an undercover op where the partner wears a wire and has to do basically whatever he hears through the earpiece. There are three main suspects and the partner has to figure out which suspect has to be guilty based on the evidence.

The mysteries are Encyclopedia Brown-level difficult, so the success of each episode depends on the chemistry between Arnett and his co-star. Arnett eats a lot of scenery in an attempt to keep his partner on his toes, and the highlight of the show is watching the actors struggle to keep straight faces and not break character.

Lynch, a sometime actor who spent most of his career playing football, is the gamest of all the co-stars, throwing himself into the role with great eagerness, making for a very fun episode. O’Brien seems stiffly awkward at first but it works in this context. And Nanjiani gets downright ridiculous trying to comply with Arnett’s silly instructions.

The meat of each episode is the interactions between Arnett and his fellow actors, with a little mystery laid on top like a garnish. It’s all in good fun, but not a show that lends itself to rewatching, especially once the killer has been named. Still, it’s plenty amusing enough to sample once.