Curb Your Enthusiasm

This is the best written, best acted, best executed American situation comedy since All in the Family.

Oh, I know, there was another well-written, well-acted, well-executed show somewhere in there, a little bauble called Seinfeld, but I honestly see Curb Your Enthusiasm as the more refined, better-formed show.

Legend has it that The Dick Van Dyke Show originally starred Carl Reiner, and that a pilot with him as the star exists somewhere.  I think if that show had gone forward as planned, it might have turned out something like Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The show has its drawbacks.  For instance, if I want sex from my wife, we cannot watch Curb Your Enthusiasm before bedtime.

Three different times, American television has tried to re-make Fawlty Towers, once with Harvey Korman, once with Bea Arthur, and most recently with John Larroquette.  I don’t advise against a fourth attempt, but if they should want to try it again, Larry David could be their man.  He doesn’t have anything like Cleese’s towering presence or exquisite physicality, but no one else currently in American TV can be as unapologetically unpleasant as he is and still have the audience on his side.