A Generational-Divide Comedy That’s Also a Crime Story
Steve Martin and Martin Short’s rapport isn’t that of a comedic partnership so much as that of a musical duo. Since their first collaboration more than 30 years ago in Three Amigos, they have developed a natural rhythm: Martin is the straight man with a wise-ass streak; Short produces over-the-top characters with wild facial contortions. Martin gets the audience to laugh with him; Short, to laugh at him. Theirs is a harmony that comedians often dream of developing but rarely achieve.
In their, the pair revisit that familiar tempo, this time as true-crime-podcast-obsessed Manhattanites investigating a death in their tony apartment complex for their podcast. Martin—in his first regular TV role since the 1970s—stars as Charles, an unemployed actor who still recites lines from the cheesy cop show he once anchored. Short plays Oliver, a theater director whose career is floundering after an ill-advised attempt at making . Two fame-adjacent has-beens bumbling around at a crime scene would have probably been enough for an appealingly kooky show. But in , which starts streaming tomorrow on Hulu, Martin and Short remix their dynamic with an unexpected third party: the pop star and former Disney Channel mainstay Selena Gomez.
