Curb Your Enthusiasm: Complete HBO Season 1 [DVD]

If you caught CYE on BBC2 or 3 you'll already be a huge fan, if you didn't then without doubt you need to buy this DVD.

The 'character' Larry David, played by the co-creator and writer of Seinfield, Larry David, is a great comic creation. He is irritable, bad tempered, painfully honest and impatient to the nth degree and in every episode is the grand architect of his own downfall...but played with such skill by the real Larry David that you can't help but root for him.

He insults and offends people where ever he goes - random people in the street...shop workers...waiters...basically anyone he bumps into - not because he sets out to do so but because he can't seem to stop himself. He always starts out with the best of intentions but the situations that follow descend into anarchy...always hilarious. His desperate chase to get to the front of the queue at the doctor's, wrestling some poor woman to the ground in the process is the funniest thing I've seen in years.

CYE is total, improvised brilliance, with an excellent cast, fab cameos, totally bizarre and politically incorrect scenarios (Incest Survivors group anyone?) and the best few hours you could possibly spend in front of the TV screen.

I dare anyone not to love this show...the US are already on series four so there is plenty to look forward to. It's simply the best thing on TV right now.

This two-disc set contains the first ten episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm along with the pilot episode and an interview with Larry David.This series concerns the life of Larry David,an obscenely rich writer who was the co-creator of Seinfeld,in which he somehow manages to get himself in ever more farcical situations of his own making which normally involve him getting in trouble for innocuous comments or simple misunderstandings.The highlights of the first season include the worst typo imaginable (in a newspaper obituary for his wife's aunt),the stupendously distasteful episode where Larry ends up going to an incest survivors meeting (where he has to make up his own story) and his numerous scrapes with his manager Jeff's parents.This series at it's best rivals all the greatest comedy of all time-the format of this programme makes it seem like a superior I'm Alan Partridge/The Office-style sitcom.File Larry David next to Peter Cook,Chris Morris,Spike Milligan...

Absolutely , without doubt , unequivocally the best comedy series of the last ten years "Curb Your Enthusiasm" could be viewed as a master class in preening narcissism if it's star Larry David -playing himself - wasn't the butt of most of the jokes and horrendous twists of fate . Here is a man who on the surface has everything, an attractive loving wife, a great career, loads of money and yet he is never truly comfortable in his own skin and is not so much a the glass is half empty kind of guy but the glass will probably shatter and cut my wrist open and I will bleed slowly to death. Larry has opinions like the rest of us but where we in social situations can defer to societal niceties and keep them to our self's, Larry cannot. If something irks him he complains....and keeps complaining h e is a human limpet in that he cannot let go .He is also a man who exudes surface charm but is a seething bag of neuroses and constantly tries to bend the world to his will only for it to snap back and smack him in the face. It's invariably bad for him and often those around him but it's unceasingly hilarious for the rest of us.

I wasn't a fan of Sienfeld, it, like a lot of American comedy, exuded a smugness that I found irksome though I could acknowledge it was very well written. But after that finished David turning down mega-bucks from other Networks stayed with HBO craving the artistic freedom it allowed him. HBO specialise in shows aimed at adults so be warned there is a lot of profanity and allusions to sex and deviancy. Personally I like it- "The Grand Opening" with the chef with Tourettes is profanity at it's most effectively comical and with the simple but ribald premise that Larry has one of his wife's hairs( from a rather personal place) stuck in his throat it leads to the sort of escalating mayhem that this show excels at.

Essentially a comedy of manners CYE is partly improvised which gives the comedy a raw pragmatic edge that eschews the rapid fire slickness of much TV comedy. Every episode, rather like "Fawlty Towers" used to do, is a hypnotically paced intensification from some minor comment or action often done in good faith by Larry, which leads to some sublime fait accompli. "The Doll" from season 2 is an absolute master class in this as Larry frantically tries to extricate himself from a problem of his own making. But really just about any of the 50 episodes here will suffice in that regard. The show is helped considerably by the excellent supporting cast. Cheryl Hines as Larry's long suffering wife is a believable mixture of incredulity at some of Larry's gaffes and support when the fates turn against him. She is also very sexy. Jeff Garlin as Larry's manager Jeff Greene is also affably wonderful. Susan Essman as Jeff's wife Susie is superbly foul mouthed and always intensifies any scene she is in. Wanda Sykes plays Cheryl's best fiend and is at the centre of the sublime episode in season 3- "Krayzee-Eyez Killa" where she has become engaged to an unfaithful gangster rapper. Comedian Richard Lewis playing himself pops in numerous episodes as does Ted Danson while various other luminaries appear in supporting roles including Michael York, Gina Gershon, Paul Reiser, Martin Short, ex Sienfled stars Jason Alexander and Julie Anne Dreyfus and even Martin Scorsese. Season Four which concentrates on Larry's Broadway role as Max Bialystock in "The Producers" has notable roles for Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer and Mel Brooks.

CYE may be too bleak, too dark, too profane for some .The jokes are not always signposted, indeed sometimes there aren't many actual jokes and some episodes take a little time to warm up. But the quality of the acting is a constant joy and the pay off is always there and sometimes is not what you expect. Larry David , in essentially playing himself , all be it with knobs on , has created a character that sits along side Steve Coogans "Alan Partridge" and Ricky Gervias,s "David Brent" . Somebody out of step with nearly everyone else around them, a closet misanthrope leaving a ploughed up furrow of chaos in their wake. But it's fantastic fun following behind seeing the worms squirm in the churned up earth. Long may he blunder blindly on?