Season 5
Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American sitcom created by and starring Larry David as himself, and produced by HBO Films, which was inspired by a 1999 one-hour mockumentary titled Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Set in Santa Monica and loosely based on David's life as a semi-retired multi-millionaire in the world after Seinfeld, the series is often described as a more subversive take on that hit program's "show about nothing" motif.
As co-creator of Seinfeld, Larry David's Los Angeles life is filled with both the celebrity of Tinseltown as well as the mundane of everyday life in which "Murphy's Law" is the order of the day - if things can go wrong, they will.
Featuring writer, actor and producer Larry David as himself, Curb Your Enthusiasm blurs the lines between reality and fiction as David lives out his real life interacting with both real and fictional characters.
Constantly finding himself in uncomfortable precidaments with his friends and the people around him - despite his best efforts not to be - Larry spends his time trying to get himself out of the trouble that finds him.
Each half-hour episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm features verité-style footage of David (playing himself) at home, at work and around town, as he gets into predicaments with fictional and real-life personalities.
With cast regulars Jeff Garlin (as manager Jeff Greene) and Cheryl Hines (as wife Cheryl), the series features appearances by guest celebrities playing themselves or character roles.
Candid, unsparing and self-deprecating, Curb Your Enthusiasm brings the off-kilter comic vision of Larry David - co-creator and co-executive producer of one of the most lauded comedy series in TV history, Seinfeld.
The series blurs the lines between reality and fiction, as David (playing himself) and a cast of real and fictional characters are followed around Los Angeles by a ubiquitous camera that chronicles the private, often banal world of a (relatively) public man.
Having evolved from the 1999 HBO special Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, this series proves how seemingly trivial details of one's day-to-day life - a trip to the movies, a phone call, a visit from some trick-or-treaters - can precipitate a "Murphy's Law" chain of misfortune to hilarious effect.
Like George Costanza in Seinfeld, the protagonist of Curb Your Enthusiasm has a knack for getting himself into uncomfortable situations that end up alienating him from peers and acquaintances.
To keep the narrative fresh and spontaneous, Curb Your Enthusiasm is shot without a script; the cast is given scene outlines and often improvise lines as they go. The result is an unpredictable format.