Larry David and Obama Team Up to Roast American History

Larry David built his comedic empire on a simple promise: no hugging, no learning. For decades, his characters stumbled through life refusing to change, grow, or pretend to care about anyone but themselves. It was refreshing, then unsettling, as the real world started to feel a lot more like a Larry David sketch—selfish, rule-breaking, and proud of it.

So what does David do now? Team up with Barack Obama to make a show about American history where the punchline is basically that people are the problem.

Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, premiering Friday on HBO, is David’s most dramatic departure yet. Instead of following one perpetually frustrated everyman through Los Angeles, the new series uses disconnected historical sketches spanning roughly the first 200 years of the United States. Obama provides the intro and serves as an executive producer, setting up the central joke: even at America’s proudest moments, there were deeply unpleasant people blocking the way forward. Larrys, in other words.

The execution is classic David chaos. At the Declaration of Independence signing, his Founding Father wants to add a list of personal grievances—like a legal requirement that dinner party guests be informed of their seating assignments. When Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat next to his talkative Alabaman, David’s character technically defends her right to sit there, but only because he doesn’t want to move either. She eventually goes to the back anyway and decides to try again another day. The telephone gets invented, and immediately someone with nothing to say ties up the line. The Wright brothers achieve flight, and David’s stuck in the middle seat.

Here’s what’s interesting: it’s essentially a one-joke show, but it feels safer than Curb Your Enthusiasm ever did. The sketches set during slavery never joke about slavery itself. You always know who you’re supposed to be rooting for, even if that answer is frequently no one. David and co-creator Jeff Schaffer largely avoid the calculated cringe that made Curb so provocative. There’s no ambiguity here, no invitation to find these terrible people charming.

Maybe that’s David acknowledging that his anti-hero formula doesn’t age well in a world where selfishness has gone from secret shame to proud ideology. Or maybe he’s just ready to make sure we know we’re laughing at these characters, not with them. Still no hugging—but perhaps, as one reviewer put it, a little learning.