Hulu: “Only Murders in the Building” Season 4

Every New Yorker has run into a celebrity at one time or another. It’s one of the bennies of living here. But if you wanted one place where you could be sure of seeing famous people on a regular basis, you’d tune into “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu).

You’d start with the three stars of the series, now in its fourth season: Steve Martin, Martin Short and the hilarious snarky Selena Gomez. For those who may have never seen the show, let me quickly catch you up: the three live in the Arconia, a grand apartment building on NYC’s Upper West Side (it’s a fictional stand-in for the Belnord, at West 86th and Bway.)

Every season, they investigate a murder that has occurred at the end of the previous season. Only stipulation: the murders must have happened only within the building. And then they podcast about it!

Our protagonists have become such a “thing” in the first three seasons of “Murders” that as Season 4 opens, we learn Hollywood wants to make a movie about them. Three other celebrities have been engaged to play them: Eugene Levy (from “Schitt’s Creek”), Zack Galifianakis and Eva Longoria.

Our three fly out to meet their movie star counterparts, along with a daffy Hollywood agent (a seriously overacting Molly Shannon) and Short’s fiancee, Loretta, played by Meryl Streep who’s obviously having a blast.

This initial merriment is overshadowed by this season’s murder victim: Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), who had been the stuntwoman for Steve Martin’s character in “Brazzos,” a 1970s TV series. Apparently Sazz was murdered by a bullet shot from a window directly across the courtyard from Charles’ apartment where she had ben visiting.

Who dunnit? Could it be one of the “Westies”, a ragtag group of tenants desperate to hold onto their rent-stabilized apartments? They include Vince Fish (Richard Kind), a guy with a case of conjunctivitis and an eyepatch; and Rudy the “Christmas guy” (Kumail Ninjani) who keeps his apartment decorated in tinsel and toy reindeers all year round. Maybe it’s the avant-garde-ish Brothers Sisters (Catherine Cohen and Siena Werner) who are co-directing the movie.

Meanwhile, our three protagonists are getting threatening text messages from the real killer, so they decamp to the home of Steve Martin’s sister Doreen (Melissa McCarthy) on Long Island. McCarthy nails Long Island right down to her doorbell chimes that play the opening notes from “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” Mellisa’s LOL-funny wrestling scene with Meryl Streep that follows is one for the ages.

Kudos also go to ha-ha funny neighbors Michael Cyril Creighton and Jackie Hoffman; as well as Jin Ha (from “Pachinko”) who plays Marshall P Pope, the struggling screenwriter.

Even after four seasons, “Murder” which has been called a comedy about murder, or a crime show that’s funny, seems to bring out the best in all its actors. And this being a New York show, it asks a rhetorical and very pertinent New York question: would you kill to hold onto a $200 a month rental—in a doorman building on the Upper West Side? I know a few who just might.

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