Review: After more than a decade, Lisa Kudrow and 'The Comeback' make a timely, final return

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

Like the mythical city of Brigadoon, Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback” has returned to television after many years away, with the difference that time has not stood still for its 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 in her youth a player in 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 TV, and the next season, in 2014, riffed on dark, streaming “prestige” television.The new (and final) season, which is both timely and speculative, addresses the impact of artificial intelligence on the medium and the industry, hinting at a dystopian future; this gives it a moral, even political, component, not to say a sense of urgency.

Not surprisingly, “The Comeback,” as a thing made by humans, comes down firmly on their side — it’s 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.But she’s been pushed into the further reaches of the profession: Her two-season cozy mystery series, “Mrs.

Hatt” (“part-time gardener, solves crime, husband is an ex-police chief”), is on no one’s radar but her own, having shown on Epix.A day’s work on a “no-budget” film is even less rewarding than she had imagined; she lasted all of two episodes on “The Traitors.” Paddling hard to stay current, ...