Who would have imagined that we’d be seeing a fourth season of “Only Murders in the Building,” premiering Tuesday on Hulu? The people who made it, possibly, as they’ve ended each season with a new mystery to be solved in the next. But the very idea of Steve Martin and Martin Short embarking on a television series in their 70s, with Selena Gomez, then not yet 30, as their co-star, seemed as wonderful as it was unlikely — and wonderful is what it turned out to be. Each succeeding season has felt like a little, not-quite-expected gift.
The fading energy of elder statesmen has become something of a hot topic this year, but “Murders” continues to argue for a productive long life. Short, 74 this year, is still in touch with his inner Ed Grimley, and Martin, now 79, is still funny in a specifically Steve Martin way — there were times watching the new season when I expected him to finish a sentence with “and I am a wild and crazy guy” — including some subtle physical humor. Gomez, solemn and low-key — who one could not have foreseen becoming the fulcrum in a May-December comedy trio — provides the perfect balance.
Let us briefly reintroduce our heroes, whom we met as lonely people finding one another around a shared love of true-crime podcasts and the fact that they all live in the Arconia, the grand old upper Manhattan building of the title. They are Charles-Haden Savage (Martin), a largely unemployed actor who starred in a successful late-’80s cop show, .