Julia Louis-Dreyfus Gives Her Best Physical Comedy Performance in ‘The New Adventures of Old Christine’

Former CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine has always been rather elusive when it comes to its availability on streaming platforms (at least for no additional cost). For a while, you could catch old episodes on TV if you were flipping through in the afternoon, and I even binged the show via Netflix — but on DVDs, if you can believe it! Luckily, we can pour ourselves a big old glass of wine and celebrate when the series is finally available on HBO Max (fingers crossed, soon – it was originally scheduled to debut on January 22).

The New Adventures of Old Christine chronicles the ups and downs, almost all of which are her own doing, of Christine, a single mom and business owner who just can’t seem to get out of her own way — and often revels in it. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Christine and is predictably fantastic. The physical comedy she employs here is absolutely second to none: move over Elaine dance, and meet the Christine shimmy. It’s hard to say it’s her best performance of all time because, ya know, Veep, she’s really incredible in this role. Watching Christine get herself in and out of ridiculous predicaments never gets old. In fact, Louis-Dreyfus was nominated for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy for each of the show’s five seasons, but only winning for the first (compared to Veep where she was nominated all seven seasons and won for six of them).

And while JLD is the star here, she is orbited by an excellent cast, including Clark Gregg as her ex-husband Richard, Wanda Sykes as her best friend, Emily Rutherfurd as New Christine, and Hamish Linklater as her brother Matthew, who all play so well off of her absurdities. Christine is a mess, but she’s also all of us. Watching her trying to juggle co-parenting, running a business, warding off meanie moms and attempting to date — and all while doing her best to keep up with American Idol — is guaranteed to give you belly laughs, mostly of the “so true it’s hilarious” kind, while also giving yourself a bit of an ego boost when you realize, comparatively, how much you actually do have your life in order (as long as you’re not hitting on your kid’s teacher, even if they are as fine as Blair Underwood).

The New Adventures of Old Christine is a classically comforting sitcom that never, ever stops being funny and caused me to let out a little cheer when I realized I’d be able to watch it over and over again. The sitcom was created and produced by Kari Lizer (who currently has the new comedy Call Your Mother on ABC) and produced and directed by Andy Ackerman, and it is a real joy that this series will hopefully soon be available to stream, not just for entertainment purposes, but because its original airing from 2006-2010 means that we did not nearly take advantage of the lol-worthy gifs this show has produced. Let’s go internet, get on it!

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the series was currently live on HBO Max.

Where to stream The New Adventures of Old Christine