Curb Your Enthusiasm

Watched The Office? Admired and enjoyed it, while peeping through your fingers as at a horror film? Then you'll find this series a hoot. While you're cringing for different reasons (The Office: clueless people, Curb Your Enthusiasm: clueless situations), you're enjoying them for the same reason -- brilliant comedy. Larry David, writer and producer of Seinfeld, has created a show that supposedly mirrors his own life, although we have to hope everything in the show doesn't happen in his life. Happening to meet the Barney's shoe salesman on the street from whom he purchased a replacement pair of lost shoes while happening to be carrying the found shoes? Right. So, the situations are Shakespearean, in the sense of idiot plots and misunderstandings galore. It could be laughable (and not in the hilarious sense), but he's created tight scripts that are humorous on several levels -- the situations themselves, the ad-libbed interactions between the characters, and the re-visiting of elements from previous episodes. I admit I was quite skeptical myself, and unfortunately any description cannot do it justice. You just have to experience it for yourself.

year: 2000-?
length: seasons 1-2 on DVD, season 5 picked up
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264235/combined