• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

Some TV critics are panning Larry David’s new HBO sketch-comedy history show in advance of its premiere on Friday.

Some of the thumbs-down reviews for the show, titled “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” are savage.

The critics are saying the show amounts to little more than a tired, recycling exercise in which David, 78, dresses old bits and obsessions from “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in period garb.

One critic described some of the sketches seen on the show as “excruciatingly bad” (The Hollywood Reporter, THR.com). Another called the show a disappointing misfire” (TVLine.com).

TVLine’s Dave Nemetz gave the show a D+. “Unfortunately, David forgot to bring along any of the wit or sparkle that made ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Curb’ certified comedy classics,” Nemetz wrote.

“Instead, ‘Life, Larry ...’ relies on dusting off old jokes and putting David in predictably awkward social situations, squandering the considerable comedy talent on screen with flimsy material,” Nemetz said.

“The writing feels uninspired,” Nemtz continued, “like a pile of rejected sketches left over from David's ‘SNL’ days. They’re one-note and labored, hitting the same ‘Larry is an a**hole’ note over and over again.”

“We expect David’s comedy to fit a certain pattern of painfully minuscule social observations -- but this is just brazen self-theft,” Nemetz said. “David and his co-creator Jeff Schaffer too often fall back on old, hacky punchlines. ‘Life, Larry ...’ is a disappointing misfire best left in the history books.”

Over at Time.com, critic Judy Berman also took up the theme of the show’s reliance on old material from David’s past.

“Most of the premises are iterations on familiar Davidian scenarios,” Berman wrote. “Consecutive ‘Larry being annoyed’ skits can get repetitive. Occasional callbacks to actual ‘Curb’ bits only draw attention to the material’s staleness.”

On the same subject, Ben Travers of IndieWire said “viewers will be annoyed, even disappointed, to hear a bevy of old chestnuts redeployed under the auspices of a new series.”

Travers described the show as “far from innovative in its approach.” He said “its lengthy sketches can grow tiring as they plod toward their expected conclusions.”

Travers even called out a specific episode of “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” as the “worst” of all of them.

“The third episode may be its worst,” Travers wrote. “A Wright Brothers spoof features airline humor ripped straight from ‘Seinfeld’s’ stand-up sets, and a rehash of the McCarthy hearings starts with Larry claiming a Communist sympathizer doesn’t respect wood -- like he’s restaging ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ in black-and-white.”

THR’s Daniel Fienberg wrote that out of all of the sketches in the show’s seven episodes, “only five or six of them were actually good.”

Fienberg even said “four or five” of the show’s sketches were “excruciatingly bad.” He said some sketches “end without a conclusive sense of what the joke even was.”

He said the whole thing left him fatigued. “Whether fatigue sets in swiftly or takes a few episodes hardly matters, because it’s almost guaranteed that it will eventually set in,” Fienberg wrote.

“It’s astonishing to see something go from clever to formulaic this fast,” Fienberg continued, “but it’s a feat that ‘Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness’ creators David and director Jeff Schaffer pull off.”