“The world has changed, he hasn’t,” says the teaser of the eleventh season of Curb your enthusiasm (Hold back your enthusiasm), which started on HBO last Sunday (Curbunfortunately, it never arrived in Italy, apart from a heroic attempt by the late Canal Jimmy in 2005).
In April 2020 Larry David was a perfect testimonial for the “stay at home” campaign of the State of California, but in the new season we are already in the post-Covid: the pandemic has happened – everyone still hates Covid-hoarders, those who hoarded amuchina and toilet paper in supermarkets causing panic – but it’s behind us.
Minutes of social life
We had hoped for a while to see the germophobic Larry grappling with the virus, or his joy in living in a misanthropic world, or the endless discussions about the Covid-era label, but in the end it’s much better this way: pandemic-themed series age quickly, and then Curb it is not made to deal with big issues but with the minutiae of social life, embarrassments, gaffes, meanness of low rank.
Curb your enthusiasm, for those unfamiliar with it, is the series from the creator of Seinfeld Larry David, in which since 2001 he has played the most reprehensible version of himself, an old curmudgeon, stingy, obsessed with the behavior of others, but at the same time completely devoid of consideration for others. Unless he has to, Larry avoids contact with other human beings, except (at times) for his close circle of Los Angeles friends, mostly from the Hollywood circle and no less superficial and self-centered than he is. Most of the time the characters play themselves, and the guest star they range from Martin Scorsese to Salman Rushdie, from Alanis Morissette to Shaquille O’Neal.
Judging from the first episode, this season’s main story could be the production of a new Netflix series titled Young Larry, ma Curb he doesn’t like simple solutions so who knows. For the moment there is the hilarious return of John Hamm and the new entry Albert Brooks, who could possibly replace the late Marty Funkhouser.