Weekend Web Series: “Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party”

What would happen if your favorite authors throughout history were all gathered in one room for a night? If your answer is “They’d start killing each other probably,” you’ll enjoy the latest web series from Shipwrecked Comedy, premiering Monday, August 22.

In an effort to win the affections of his beloved Annabel Lee (Mary Kate Wiles), Edgar Allan Poe (Sean Persaud) decides to invite some of the biggest names in classic literature to a Murder Mystery Invite-Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck — also known as “Poe Party,” if you’re into the whole brevity thing.

This spooky comedy features such literary giants as Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde, George Elliot, Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway, H.G. Wells and Fyodor Dostoevsky, just to name a few. They’re accompanied by the ghost of Lenore from Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” (Sinead Persaud), who has devoted her afterlife to following Poe around and rolling her eyes at him.

It’s all snarky good fun with a bunch of our web series faves — “Who do you think we are, the Austens?” scoffs Ashley Clements’ Charlotte Bronte, in a sly nod to her Lizzie Bennet Diaries credentials — until the authors start meeting their grisly deaths one by one and the series turns into a literary-themed version of “Clue.”

Jim O’Heir, best known as Jerry from Parks and Recreation, appears as the constable trying to solve the murders, with Video Game High School‘s Jimmy Wong as his sidekick.

“Poe Party” is an elaborate spinoff of Shipwrecked Comedy’s “A Telltale Vlog,” which you might want to catch up on before the series premiere on Monday.