ixed messages emanate from Jerry Seinfeld’s new Netflix special, which introduces a daredevil leaping from a helicopter to get to his gig, then substitutes him for a world-weary sexagenarian, disengaging from life with a dismissive wave of his hand. So which is true? Neither, I should think – as that contradiction cheerfully reminds us, we don’t turn to Seinfeld for personal intimacies. He is Mr Generic, the American everyman who exists on stage to channel our observations of, and mild frustrations with, the business of being alive. Aged 65, he still does so sublimely – particularly in the first half of this new hour, filmed in New York and featuring material performed in the UK last summer. A wonderful opening sends up the rigmarole of coming out to do a comedy show, just another “hyped-up not necessary special event … put together so we could kill some time”. Why do any of us bother? None of us want to be here, Seinfeld tells us, as if blowing the gaff on some illicit truth. “Nobody wants to be anywhere … Nobody likes anything.” Via a detour into Pop-Tarts and pretentious cuisine, subjects with all the cutting-edge of a soup spoon, our host segues (“What else is annoying in the world besides everything?”) into a disquisition on technology, reaping big laughs from our iPhone dependency and the poorly remembered origins of text messaging. Again, familiar standup terrain – but Jerry excavates the novel angle, and brings it to zesty life with exemplary delivery and (witness his dumbshow of cartoon exhaustion as his phone battery dies) unshowy physical comedy. There’s a lull after this, not redeemed when Seinfeld “changes gears” into more personal material – which turns out to be old-fashioned ’er-indoors shtick about married life. The “women do this, men do that” generalities are a bit off-the-peg. But there are some choice riffs, as his wife complains about his incorrect tone (“I thought it was a marriage; apparently it’s a musical”), and as Jerry frets that his babies are also his replacements. (“Their first words are ‘mam’, ‘dada’ and ‘bye bye’.”) Helicopter sky-dive apart, there’s nothing daring about Seinfeld – but if 23 Hours to Kill is safe, it’s also, usually, sparkling.