TV review: Netflix's 'Friends from College' is an annoying stink bomb

I was looking forward to the new Netflix comedy "Friends from College" — which may help explain why I dislike it so much. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I mean, four of the six "Friends" are familiar faces who have proven they're talented, comedic actors — Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Savage, Cobie Smulders and Nat Faxon. And they're wasted on bad characters and bad writing.

Really, you can't have expectations low enough for this show, which started streaming on Friday. It's filled with incredibly annoying characters doing incredibly annoying things.

As you can tell from the title, these people were friends when they went to college. They went to Harvard, and they mention that. A lot.

Annoying.

Most of them are turning 40, and they're trying to figure out what went wrong with their lives.

Also annoying.

Ethan (Key) is a pretentious but not particularly successful novelist. He's married to Lisa (Smulders, "How I Met Your Mother"), a lawyer, and he's engaged in an ongoing affair with Sam (Annie Parisse, "Person of Interest"), which predates his marriage. Sam is also married.

Ah, the hilarity of adultery!

Ethan and Lisa pick up and move to New York, where Sam and some of their other "Friends from College" live. They crash on the sofa bed of Marianne (Jae Suh Park) a struggling actress.

"We've got 20 years of grievances built up and ready to explode," Lisa says.

The only explosion in "Friends from College" is that the entire eight-episode series is a stink bomb.

It's crude, predictable and stupid.

Don't get me wrong. Crude and stupid can be funny. But not in this show.

Savage ("The Wonder Years") plays Max, Ethan's pal/literary agent, who convinces him to write young-adult fiction. Faxon ("Married" is another old pal, a slacker with a trust fund.

And the guest cast in outstanding, including Ike Barinholtz ("The Mindy Project"), Greg Germann ("Ally McBeal"), Kate McKinnon ("Saturday Night Live")and Seth Rogen turn up as well.

It's all a huge waste of talent.