The humour is basic, the laugh track extremely dated and the dialogue creaky. But Kelsey Grammer and co’s fantastic performances lift it until it just about gets away with it all

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.