Curb Your Enthusiasm review (Curb Your Enthusiasm)

Member Name: Walter_Kovacs

Product:	Curb Your Enthusiasm
Date:	18/10/08 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very funny, witty

Disadvantages: May be too offensive for some

Curb Your Enthusiasm is an american sitcom created by Larry David, who also co-created that mammoth of sitcoms, Seinfeld. It was inspired by a 1999 mockumentary entitled "Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm" which was only meant to be a one time thing.

Larry David stars as himself, and is based on his life as a semi-retired millionaire living in LA. He lives with his long-suffering wife Cheryl (played by Cheryl Hines) and the show basically follows him around as he goes about his daily life and gets into various incidents. Other characters include Larry's manager Jeff (Jeff Garlin) and Jeff's wife Susie (Susie Essman) who is prone to the odd foul-mouthed outburst.

There are also a lot of guest stars that appear as themselves, including Ted Danson and his wife Mary Steenburgen, Stephen Colbert, Ben Stiller and Seinfeld actors Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. All of these superb guest stars help to blur the reality between this show and real life.

Curb is different to most sitcoms in that the actors don't recite lines from a script, they're given a basic structure as to what the scene is about and then they improvise. This gives it a very natural feel and again blends together with real life. It's quite similar in many ways to Seinfeld, it has the same sorta storylines about nothing, the same sharp humour, a big difference though is that Curb is shown on HBO and so can get away with a lot more, thus you get a lot of colourful language. Even the music at the beginning is pure Larry David, it's silly, almost childish really.

Larry is a socially awkward character, who usually says the wrong through no fault of his own and ends up either offending someone or just plain annoying them. It's truly cringeworthy TV at it's finest, because if we see that Larry has done something wrong, and he's getting yelled at by someone, he's totally oblivious as to what he's done. He never intentionally sets out to offend people, it just seems to happen, and when it does it's hugely entertaining and embarrassing in equal measures.

Overall one of the best sitcoms on TV today, and with dialogue so sharp you could cut leather with it. May be too offensive for some though, so it's probably not for anyone with a weak disposition. Highly recommended, five stars!

Summary: One of the best shows on TV!