How Curb Your Enthu­si­asm rein­vent­ed the TV sitcom

There’s one sto­ry about Lar­ry David that isn’t fun­ny. When the co-cre­ator of Sein­feld received the call that the show was being picked up for a third sea­son, he sat on his bed and cried in the mis­tak­en belief that he’d already used up every last idea he could pos­si­bly have. There’s some­thing beau­ti­ful about this tale of imposter syn­drome, not only that David would do some­thing as pro­found­ly un-Amer­i­can and un-show­biz as feel­ing such feel­ings, but that he’d go so far as to admit it publicly.

For per­haps the great­est sit­com writer in his­to­ry to dis­play such inse­cu­ri­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty about his work should make us all feel as though it’s okay to feel like we don’t know what we’re doing. He needn’t have wor­ried though – he was the major cre­ative force behind Sein­feld for anoth­er five years and the sto­ry didn’t end there.

In 1999, fol­low­ing the unprece­dent­ed back to back dis­ap­point­ments of the Sein­feld finale and his under­rat­ed fea­ture film debut Sour Grapes, David could have been for­giv­en if he decid­ed to spend some time alone with his for­tune. Instead, he con­coct­ed Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, a sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy every bit as ground­break­ing and influ­en­tial as the ​“show about noth­ing” which made his name.

Curb adopt­ed the Christo­pher Guest mod­el of ret­ro­script­ing, in which a detailed out­line is pro­duced by David but the actu­al dia­logue is impro­vised by the actors. While the series is not a mock­u­men­tary (the pilot aside), it is shot in a style rem­i­nis­cent of ciné­ma vérité and paved the way for shows like Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment, Parks and Recre­ation and Mod­ern Fam­i­ly. Even The Office, often viewed as ground zero for the mock­u­men­tary sit­com, arrived a cou­ple of years after Curb (though its UK coun­ter­part first aired in 2001).

Tonal­ly, while Sein­feld touched on taboo top­ics but was restrained by the rules of net­work tele­vi­sion, David has a free reign on HBO. Sub­jects have includ­ed death, dis­abil­i­ty, the holo­caust, racism and sex­u­al­i­ty. Since the pilot at the end of the last mil­len­ni­um, Curb has con­sis­tent­ly tack­led sacred cows with the joke invari­ably com­ing at the expense of its pro­tag­o­nist. An entire gen­er­a­tion of come­di­ans and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes have been inspired by David’s sec­ond rein­ven­tion of the medi­um but accept no substitutes.

The come­di­an read the phrase ​“curb your enthu­si­asm” in a book and made a note of it, around the same time he asked his assis­tant to track down the jaun­ty music from a bank com­mer­cial he enjoyed. Years lat­er, David was think­ing about return­ing to stand-up com­e­dy after a decade out of the game. Jeff Gar­lin was so enam­oured with the idea that he asked whether he might be able to film this come­back for an HBO special.

David agreed but sus­pect­ed his day-to-day life was too bor­ing for a doc­u­men­tary and out­lined some ideas for scenes around the stand-up per­for­mances. There was no script and that orig­i­nal out­line was no longer than a page or so but it proved the gen­e­sis of a rev­o­lu­tion. Acclaimed doc­u­men­tary direc­tor Robert B Wei­de was brought into the fold and Gar­lin was cast as Jeff, best friend and con­fi­dante of the on-screen Larry.

In the first few sea­sons, actors were work­ing for scale, there were no trail­ers and celebri­ty guests exclu­sive­ly played them­selves to aid verisimil­i­tude. The star, it is worth not­ing, was a tele­vi­sion writer in his fifties with lit­tle to no act­ing expe­ri­ence. Ted Dan­son active­ly dis­liked the pilot but agreed to appear in the first sea­son pure­ly because he got on with David. Cheryl Hines, an actress with a firm ground­ing in impro­vi­sa­tion, was cast as Larry’s wife since her instincts in the audi­tion told her not to sim­ply shout at her scene part­ner for every lit­tle mis­de­meanour. When the show first aired, one fam­i­ly mem­ber was so con­vinced by its authen­tic­i­ty that they called up to ask why they hadn’t been invit­ed to her wedding.

Come­di­ans like Susie Ess­man, Richard Lewis, Wan­da Sykes, Bob Ein­stein and JB Smoove round out the cast and have seen their rep­u­ta­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanced by virtue of their gift­ed impro­vi­sa­tion­al abil­i­ties. The show’s title might have been an attempt to low­er expec­ta­tions after the enor­mous suc­cess of Sein­feld but David’s instinc­tive under­stand­ing of fun­ny ensured a cult fol­low­ing was almost immediate.

To some, the char­ac­ter of Lar­ry is rem­i­nis­cent of the schlemiel char­ac­ter of Yid­dish folk­lore whose actions lead to an inevitable down­fall and who stands in oppo­si­tion to social and cul­tur­al norms. David would prob­a­bly sim­ply argue that he writes about what he knows; sin­gle­hood and New York dur­ing the Sein­feld years and the pet­ty irri­ta­tions of a wealthy Amer­i­can Jew liv­ing in Los Ange­les in Curb.

There are no more moun­tains left for David to con­quer. He is to sit­coms what Mozart is to music – a man who has tak­en the art form to gid­dy­ing new heights with a com­bi­na­tion of hon­esty and post­mod­ern self-aware­ness. Typ­i­cal­ly dead­pan, he claims Curb is only return­ing because he was sick of being asked if the show was com­ing back. Smoove, the man who plays the incor­ri­gi­ble Leon, is already try­ing to talk his boss into one more sea­son, explain­ing, ​“Ten sea­sons looks good in the box set. Eight don’t look, nine don’t look good. Ten is perfect.”

Maybe there won’t be anoth­er sea­son, per­haps the star will nev­er work again, and lord knows he doesn’t have to. Whether he does or doesn’t, Curb will enter­tain view­ers for decades to come and seal its creator’s place in the pan­theon of com­ic greats. Not that he’ll care. As the great man once said when he went up to col­lect an Emmy for his work on Sein­feld: ​“This is all well and good, but I’m still bald.”