That joke isn't funny any more

The first episode of Ricky Gervais' latest comedy, Life's Too Short, had one funny scene I thought, the one where lead actor Warwick Davis went to see his accountant.  It seems he's on a downdward curve from the cringingly funny The Office through the sporadically amusing Extras.

I know it must be difficult to repeat a hit or sustain success.  Another of my favourite comedies, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, also seems to have fallen a bit flat in the middle of the current series, when the characters relocated from LA to New York.

David started out as a writer for Woody Allen who has also slipped from his stellar seventies films Annie Hall and Manhattan and the bittersweet Hannah and Her Sisters to OK ones like New York Stories and now stuff that doesn't even seem to be written as comedy. 

As someone once said of Allen, real art consists of being able to mine the same seam without it ever becoming repetitive.  The other side of that coin is that if you're in a hole, stop digging.