Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback tackles the use of AI and ageing in a changing TV world
The third and final season of the sitcom skewers Hollywood’s obsession with algorithms while celebrating human creativity and authenticity
Like the mythical city of Brigadoon, Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback has returned to television after many years away. Yet time has not stood still for the show’s inhabitants, older in a changing world that values them less and which they navigate with less assurance.
Kudrow, who created and writes the series with Michael Patrick King, was a player during the twilight of network-dominated television, cast in a smart, influential show with wide, multigenerational appeal; in a quantitative sense, at least, everything would be downhill from there, as the medium transformed and transformed again.
The Comeback premiered in 2005, just a year after the end of Friends; the first season addressed the rise of reality television, and the next season, in 2014, riffed on dark, streaming “prestige” television.
Not surprisingly, The Comeback, as a thing made by humans, comes down firmly on their side – it is a manifesto at times – even as it acknowledges, uncomfortably, that computer-produced content might be “good enough”.
Once again, Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, who, at 60 – the phrase “of a certain age” repeats throughout the series – still qualifies as a working actor.