Jerry Seinfeld is a comedy icon, and around the world, people still gorge on his iconic, eponymous 90s sitcom.

You do you, as long as you’re not watching Friends, Two and a Half Men, or The Big Bang Theory.

That’s a joke – step away from the keyboard.

Anyway, at the age of 66, Jerry is back with 23 Hours to Kill, a new Netflix stand-up special that gained some rave reviews.

The Guardian gave the special four of five stars, calling it “sublime from Mr Generic”, which sounds like a compliment and a dig all wrapped in one.

Before we cover the reviews, here is the official trailer for the special:

’23 hours to kill’ sounds like pretty much every weekend day under lockdown.

Back to the Guardian:

He is Mr Generic, the American everyman who exists on stage to channel our observations of, and mild frustrations with, the business of being alive.

Aged 65, he still does so sublimely…Via a detour into Pop-Tarts and pretentious cuisine, subjects with all the cutting-edge of a soup spoon, our host segues (“What else is annoying in the world besides everything?”) into a disquisition on technology, reaping big laughs from our iPhone dependency and the poorly remembered origins of text messaging.

Again, familiar standup terrain – but Jerry excavates the novel angle, and brings it to zesty life with exemplary delivery and (witness his dumbshow of cartoon exhaustion as his phone battery dies) unshowy physical comedy.

NME also gave Seinfeld four out of five stars, calling the special “the comedy equivalent of the ‘old man yells at cloud’ meme”:

Perfectly timed for the lockdown blues, this is just what we need right now. There’s a weird opening stunt involving a helicopter that looks like it was only there to amuse Jerry, but the rest is a pretty solid hour of sweating the small stuff. High-pitched, self-obsessed and crafted within an inch of its life, this is old man moaning of the highest order.

Judging by social media these days, everybody loves a good moan, so we can all relate.

23 Hours to Kill hit Netflix yesterday, so if Jerry is your cup of tea, get stuck in.

[sources:guardian&nme]