Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9 episode 1 review: Even in 2017, Larry David is still unafraid to go there

Larry gonna Larry, backlash be damned

"Everything's funny," Larry told Richard Lewis in tonight's Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9 opener, a retort to his long-suffering friend's outrage that he wasn't more sympathetic about his dead parakeet, but also a reminder to society of its inherent absurdity.

The world and the collective conversation has changed considerably in the six years that Curb has been off-air and it's become a more difficult place in which to do comedy - or at least to get away with it. This return episode - "Foisted!" - put to bed any concerns that the show might have to tread more carefully though, with Larry trampling into lesbian weddings, black slang, genital mutilation and fatwas all within the space of half an hour.

The updated, upscaled camerawork might have thrown the viewer a little, but the chemistry in front of it picked up right where it left off, with all the Curb favourites on as good improv form as ever and clearly having a fantastic time being back on the show, which is essentially a playground for the cast.

Larry, wirier than when we last saw him but as spirited as ever, swiftly waded into a debate over which member in a lesbian couple should be the traditional bride in the wedding and which the groom, a classic Curb case of his interest coming from a good place but nonetheless being entirely unwelcome. He also engaged himself in a fight to offload his constipated assistant - played by Carrie Brownstein - and delivered manager Jeff a new musical, Fatwa!, based on Salman Rushdie's denunciation by the Ayatollah. Along the way we bumped into Cheryl, still split up from Larry and now working on an anti-FGM initiative, Susie Green, still wonderfully cantankerous and gaudily dressed, and Leon Black, with actor JB Smoove outdoing himself as Larry's unlikely friend continued to educate him on being more efficacious with his social interactions.

Jimmy Kimmel made a cameo - Larry appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in-show to promote his new musical - and Andy Buckley (who you may remember as David Wallace in The Office US) popped up too as an FBI director advising Larry on dealing with the fatwa ultimately declared against him over the musical.

This death threat will, according to the executive producer, hang over the whole of season 9, which got off to a punchy start tonight. Far from shying away from controversy, Curb courted it; Larry will no doubt be at the receiving end of some angry tweets over this episode, but, at the age of 70 and with zero desire to read Twitter reactions, what the fuck does he care?

Curb airs on HBO on Sunday nights in the US and on Sky Atlantic and through NOWTV on Monday nights in the UK.