Enthusiasm Duly Curbed

We've had digital telly (terres-tree-al) for a couple of weeks now. As you may remember, my main motivation was the opportunity to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. Well, I've seen a couple of episodes and I'm largely unmoved.

As far as I can make out, half an hour of Curb... is equivalent to 5 minutes of Seinfeld (or 3 minutes of The Simpsons, for that matter). Improv is hard work, and they make it seem so. You can see all the joins.

Last night's episode, in which some guy from HBO eats the prawns out of his Chinese takeaway after a mix-up. Quite funny, and when you tell it to someone else, quite funny. Except it takes 30 seconds to tell it, and the episode was 30 of our earth minutes long.

In Seinfeld, it would have been George, Jerry having received the wrong meal, would have eaten the prawns out of it before returning it to the restaurant. Jerry would have made disapproving noises, and then Newman would have burst in, having picked up his meal, to complain that someone had eaten all the prawns out of it. And he'd have blamed Jerry, the original recipient. And like that.

And we laughed over it, and Hemingway punched me in the nose.

Anyway, the best thing about digital telly so far is the opportunity to stick the kids in front of CBeebies between 6.30 and 7.00 pm, so that Babette and I can eat dinner in peace. This is a Blessing.