Larry David<\/a> from Curb Your Enthusiasm as Larry David doing his shtick from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Which is a slightly different and much worse thing. It is mostly shouting stuff you\u2019ve probably heard before and put better, in period costume. In the opening episode he shouts in a powdered wig as a member of the Continental Congress who had a crack at drafting the Declaration of Independence before Jefferson. In 18th-century Larry\u2019s hands, it was intended to deal with far more than 27 historical grievances. He wants to make it illegal to share umbrellas (\u201cYou forgot your own umbrella? Too bad!\u201d), share desserts (for Seinfeldian double-dipping reasons) or wish anyone a happy new year after 7 January. And everyone should have the right to ask who the other guests are before they accept a dinner party invitation.<\/p>\nIt goes on. All the sketches do. The next is about the first telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Watson. Both are awkward, tedious and don\u2019t know how to finish. Another, in the third episode, about the McCarthy hearings, goes on almost as long as the witch hunts themselves.<\/p>\n
It goes on. All the sketches do \u2026 David with Jon Hamm and Sean Hayes in Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. Photograph: HBO Max<\/p>\n
Other sketches have Larry shouting as a first world war soldier in the trenches, trying initially to avoid agreeing to deliver a fellow fighter\u2019s letter to his girlfriend if he dies, and then war altogether by pretending to be shot in No Man\u2019s Land, or shouting as the third Wright brother, objecting to having to take the middle seat in their first aircraft. Again, familiar. Which wouldn\u2019t necessarily matter \u2013 Larry David fans will be tuning in to see Larry David as Larry David \u2013 if his gifts were on full show and skewering the cowardice and hypocrisies of the human condition so we are writhing in exquisite agony with him and\/or the people round him. But they are not.<\/p>\n
A couple that touch on racism \u2013 Larry as a talkative dullard sits next to Rosa Parks on a bus and bores her back to the back; Larry as a host along the Underground Railroad who is taken advantage of by his guests who refuse to help out (on the grounds that that\u2019s \u201cslave stuff\u201d) \u2013 manage to be both exercises in punch-pulling and punching down. This makes for a bad experience comedically as well as in many other ways. That said, there is one moment \u2013 when Larry the Bore asks Rosa if she would rather be robbed by a black or a white man (\u201cInteresting, sociologically\u201d) \u2013 when you are reminded of David at his razor-like best, distilling the essence of an array of unspeakable human complications into one line. But they are desperately few.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the familiarity of the material, though, that is the most striking flaw. What\u2019s on offer puts you in mind of HL Mencken\u2019s definition of a hotdog \u2013 \u201cthe sweepings of the abattoir\u201d \u2013 instead of peak Larry, especially during a sketch about Lewis and Clark with guest star Jerry Seinfeld (they\u2019re just going on their expedition to get away from their wives! My sides!).<\/p>\n
To an extent that the great man surely would not be happy with, Life, Larry and \u2026 depends for any success on a blend of faith and nostalgia that is almost indistinguishable from charity.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth watching the Obama introduction, though. And weeping softly.<\/p>\n
Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness is on HBO Max now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is always an emotional blow to see former US president Barack Obama pop up on one\u2019s screen.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-764469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}