Knowing where not to be is as important as knowing where to be. Steve Martin turned down an offer from legendary producer Lorne Michaels to join him. Saturday Night Live, to play Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, on the show. “Lorne, I’m not an impersonator. You have to get someone who really nails the guy,” was his response, he told Los Angeles Times. The talent of knowing what you have talent for.
We recently saw Steve Martin in a documentary about his life and work, STEVE! (martin): a documentary in two parts (Apple TV+). An atypical diptych to portray an atypical comedian. And from today we can see him in the fourth season of Only murders in the building (Disney+). A series that brings warmth to home is back.
It is precisely Steve Martin’s character, Charles-Haden Savage, who has the most direct relationship with the crime being investigated this season, as anyone who finished the third season will remember. On this occasion, the whodunit coexists with a meta plot: Paramount wants to buy the rights to the podcast of our three protagonists to make a film in which Eva Longoria, Zach Galifianakis and Eugene Levy will play the characters of Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin. And how well Longoria, Galifianakis and Levy laugh at themselves, we have not seen self-parodies or meta games of this caliber since Rockefeller Plaza (30 Rock).
For its tone, for its genre, for its lack of pretensions, Only murders in the building is an under-awarded series. Selena Gomez has won before at, ahem, Cannes, where this year she took home the award for best female performance alongside her fellow cast members from Emilia Perezas the actresses of Returnwhich at the Emmys. But if a series of those that critics consider elevated were to mark the homage that this one marks Until his time came By the end of the first episode of this season, we’d be reading articles about it until doomsday. “Finding your character is like finding the killer for a detective,” the voice says in off Savage in the next episode. Finding your audience too, and the affection of those who follow her, as she would say, is the curriculum of Only murders in the building. It’s no small thing.
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