What’s with all the screen veterans and the zeitgeisty comedy lately? February blessed us with the ludicrously brilliant final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a vehicle for that notorious contrarian Larry David (77 years old). August delivered a glorious fourth outing for Only Murders in the Building, which stars septuagenarian pals Steve Martin (79) and Martin Short (74). Last October, meanwhile, saw the arrival of the much-anticipated Frasier revival, a sequel to the era-defining 90s sitcom starring a now-69-year-old Kelsey Grammer.
All three shows deal in nostalgia to some extent: the last episode of Curb riffed archly on the controversial 1998 finale of Seinfeld (co-created by David), while the old-school comic chops of Martin and Short means Only Murders inevitably stirs up memories of farces past. Yet both programmes also feel distinctly modern: Only Murders is a genre-bending thriller about true-crime podcasters that knows exactly how to tap into weird meme-y humour, while Curb pioneered a meta-naturalism that contemporary comedy continues to heed.
