This week’s episode seems to have vanished, replaced – last night – with a jumble of unrelated, unexceptional programmes. Worse, next week the channel’s entire Monday night has been given over to… back-to-back Phoenix Nights!

There were only two episodes left in the series as well. I know More4 has always been loathe to treat the show with any respect, but this is, well, diabolical.

The same is true of the current series, currently being shown on More4, but I think there’s another problem now – what on Earth has happened to Cheryl? Previously, Cheryl played an important part in the show – she was as embarrassed and appalled at the worst excesses of Larry’s behaviour as everyone else, but the series always pointed out the pair had a great relationship and she would be smart and witty enough to help dig Larry out of most holes.

In this series, though, she seems to have become a humourless, rather unpleasant individual who seems to be in the show purely to start arguments and disapprove of Larry’s behaviour. In fact I don’t think she’s even smiled once, in between chastising Larry for buying forbidden toilet roll, banning Jeff from their house or shouting at Larry without even waiting to hear his side of the story.

At the moment I’m actually rather relieved when Cheryl isn’t on screen ready to show him up or cause problems. Does this carry on throughout the whole series?

Either way, for now, who’d have thought Susie would become the most appealing female character on this show?

Ever Decreasing Circles (Christmas special)
The loudest laugh you’ll ever hear in a BBC sitcom turns up in this, when Richard Briers wakes up on Boxing Day to discover lying next to him in bed is … Well, you can guess. It’s a hysterical, touching, slightly surreal and avowedly inspiring episode that avoids all cloying sentimentality and goes instead for clumsy, authentic emotion.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (“The Blue Carbuncle”)
A shameless bit of Granada period festive finery, but what’s not to like? Holmes and Watson spend the best part of an hour schlepping round London on Christmas Eve on the trail of an elusive goose, encountering shysters, tinkers, vagabonds, washerwomen and rozzers aplenty. Everywhere and everyone is decked out in seasonal splendour and suffused with yuletide spirits, even, yes even, Holmes himself. The moment when they discover the location of the titular gem is simply fantastic.

Yes, Minister (“Party Games”)
“Mrs Hacker left these for you to sign: your personal Christmas cards. But it won’t take long. Only eleven hundred and seventy-two.” The story of a shady lady from Argentina, drunken pratfalls, a Prime Ministerial resignation, butter mountains, wine lakes and the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube. And, ultimately, the sight of Paul Eddington getting to become Prime Minister: the perfect Christmas present you could wish for in any year.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (“Mary, Joseph and Larry”)
This is an especially great episode because Larry starts off by going out of his way to do good – putting up with his in-laws, distributing generous tips at the golf club – and yet can’t help but contrive to be his own worst enemy, accidentally eating a batch of cookies depicting the nativity because he thought Jesus “looked like a monkey”. Hiring a local performance troupe to hastily restage a crib scene in his driveway, more trouble ensues when he tries to get the bloke playing Joseph to agree that “the woman playing Mary is hot”. Still, at least the ensuing tussle dislodges the pubic hair stuck in Larry’s throat.

The West Wing (“In Excelsis Deo”)
I’m going to say this is the best of the lot. The 48 hours before Christmas Day are filled, variously, with the President popping out to a second-hand bookshop, his secretary revealing it’s the anniversary of her sons’ deaths in Vietnam, his press secretary flirtatiously jousting with a reporter, two of his senior staff laying their careers on the line for his chief of staff, and his communications director taking it upon himself to arrange a full military funeral for a homeless Korean War veteran. It sounds a jumbled, disjointed mess, but it’s the complete opposite, embracing every cliche and convention of “the Christmas episode” then turning them all on their head. There’s rarely been a more shiningly sincere example of festive television.

I don’t doubt that everything is grist for Larry to find himself in an uncomfortable situation, but one of the things I enjoy about this show is its naturalness – as I eluded to in the OTT review of the first episodes. Yet in this episode, as with some others earlier in the run (I’m thinking here of “no gifts”), everyone else seems to behave in completely illogical and unnatural ways. And I always want Larry to win anyway.

It is still funny, though – but I’d rather have more “Are we going to fuck or talk about your dirty suit?” than “Somebody get a sponge”.

Such is the majesty of Curb Your Enthusiasm. So much is crammed into each half hour that the thought of having to sit through it a second time to properly take in all the throwaway gags and nifty plot twists is not something to regret but to relish. Even before each episode is finished you’re anxious for the moment when you can rewind the tape and start from the top once more.

That’s quite a remarkable achievement, certainly for a US comedy series. But it’s all the more impressive given how those painstakingly constructed plots are not only carried off with such ease and consummate charm by the cast, but have also arrived on screen in the form of almost wholly improvised scenes. This lot are making it up as they go along, having a great time, and it’s still genius!

Saying that, it’s likely the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm will have passed most of the viewing nation by. Promoted in this country from day one as an acquired taste, the programme has never been in a position to garner massive ratings or even cumulative critical appeal. Perhaps that’s not surprising – after all, a sitcom whose main callings cards can, if so desired, be depicted as an obsession with extreme obscenity, TV taboos (incest, paedophilia, blasphemy) and downright amateurish photography is clearly, even today, an inflammable proposition for most broadcasters.

But at the same time its core elements can also be ticked off as an unrestrained celebration of accidental misfortune, the comic potential for misunderstanding, and an individual struggling through a world dead set on making his life a misery: themes as ancient as the written word. And herein lies a clue to the show’s brilliance. Anyone can in theory identify with its central character Larry David and his desperate tactics to avoid embarrassing social situations, or to call in tricky favours – or even to engineer petty retribution on a close associate. Anyone would love to be able to have Larry’s ability for killer one-liners, on-the-mark put-downs, the guts to howl outraged complaints at the smallest thing, and the intelligence that sees people and situations for what they really are. Few of us, though, would ever dare to do so in real life.

It’s certainly asking the viewer to make a large leap in their perception of how rich celebrity Californians have to go about their business. The show does foreign audiences no favours, being littered with American cultural jargon and numerous special guests. On top of all this, the way in which Curb Your Enthusiasm turns the everyday into the extraordinary in such an ostensibly unfettered, unselfconscious manner (you’ll never hear “cunt” used more often in a sitcom) can only have hastened its acquisition of cult credentials.

But like all programmes that attract and sustain loyal if tiny audiences, there’s an exclusivity about it that seems to work in its favour. Maybe it was just as well there have only ever been three episodes shown on terrestrial television. When Curb Your Enthusiasm debuted in the UK last year on BBC4, it immediately helped that channel turn from a largely downbeat, cheerless ghetto into a much more dynamic and addictive endeavour. Now it’s been snapped up by E4, however, and you can’t help feeling the Beeb were very unwise to let it go. It’s doubtful it can enact the same magical influence upon its new home, chiefly given that E4 has never had any coherent identity, even a downbeat, cheerless one. Where next for BBC4′s comedy output?

In the meantime there are 10 brand new helpings of Larry and co to savour over the next few months. If you’ve never watched Curb … before, the start of this series is as good an entry point as any, especially as there’s to be a loose overarching theme to this run: Larry’s involvement in a restaurant business, in which he’s decided to invest along with other celebrity friends. It’s a hugely unlikely conceit upon which to hang his weekly dose of escapades, but it’s also a resolutely typical one, being redolent of many a scenario he sort of just blunders into knowing nothing whatsoever about, but which he immediately seeks to commandeer for his own ends.

Indeed, one of the highlights of this opening episode was the incongruous yet hilarious sight of Larry purporting to “chair” a discussion with his fellow investors – all of whom clearly knew far more about catering than he – about the menu (“I will not be giving you any money if you serve kebabs”), the service (“every table should have a bell on it”) and even the uniforms. “I was put in charge of uniforms,” he later reported to his wife Cheryl, “this is something that I’m very interested in!”

Larry out of his depth, seeking to impose his own system of values and prejudices onto others, is one of Curb‘s great recurring themes. You can’t help but warm to his valiant attempts to talk even the most stubborn of opponents round to his way of thinking – after all, if he believes he’s right, why shouldn’t? It’s mirrored by another habitual element of the show, where a supporting character that Larry has wronged is merited the opportunity to seek unexpected revenge, usually through another quirk of fate that has left him in some demeaning situation. Here it was a dentist, his invitation to dinner rubbished by a horrified Larry (“that’s the end of this dentist … everybody’s got to get together … the whole world’s got to get together”) before finding his reluctant guest seeking urgent treatment after being hit in the mouth by a baseball bat wielded by Ted Danson’s daughter.

The means by which Larry found himself receiving such a ludicrous injury, and why he was then more concerned by the blood stains on his new shirt than his missing teeth, all flow from the programme’s greatest strength: its structure. The complex yet utterly natural, freewheeling feel to the plots harks back to the very best of Fawlty Towers or One Foot in the Grave, in the way seemingly inconsequential incidents return to play a hugely significant role in proceedings. Hence the very first scene of this episode, involving Larry innocently tossing an apple core into a neighbour’s bin, supplied the perfectly-timed dénouement in the very last scene. This might be merely a variance on the kind of crude signposting that underpins most mainstream US comedy, but it’s a hundred times more entertaining for being so cunning and executed in such low-key fashion.

In fact, this series opener had almost everything you’ve come to look for and expect in a textbook Curb episode, from Larry trampling all over the feelings of a bereaved friend to getting involved in an undignified comical punch-up, scrambling around on the floor and flailing like a girl. As time’s gone on and these signature elements have become more obvious, the programme feels like it’s got funnier. There are certainly far more laugh-out-loud moments than in early episodes, partly, no doubt, because we’ve become attuned to all these ingredients, and partly because – well – even Larry’s face is somehow funny now.

It might be into its third series here, and shortly to embark on its fifth in America, but Curb Your Enthusiasm is no less fresh and sublime than when it first began. From the most modest of premises, and really the most flimsy of conceits, a sequence of expertly synchronised and mutually dependant plots continue to spin. Against a backdrop of equally inspired and quirky incidental music, chaos usually reigns by the time the 30 minutes are up, but it’s all happened so perfectly, so naturally, and with the most contrived events imaginable somehow acted out in the most uncontrived way, you’re left bowled over with joy.

Quite simply, television doesn’t get much better than this.

Here was a show that was totally unlike any sitcom I’d ever seen. It was all about slices of life, realising that normal day-to-day occurrences were just as funny, if not funnier, than big life-changing moments. Hence there were entire episodes dedicated to party etiquette, or fretting over buying a suit. And it was all helped out by realistic characters and some brilliant lines. Since it ended, I’ve yet to find a sitcom that seemed as relevant and as funny as Seinfeld. Until now.

It’s hard not to compare Curb Your Enthusiasm with Seinfeld. For a start, it’s ligging around the backwaters of the schedules. BBC2′s treatment of Seinfeld was a constant annoyance for it’s fans, though people forget that when it started on UK TV, it was first shown at 9pm, but the audience wasn’t big enough and it moved later and later in the evening until it ended up after midnight (to be fair, Sky One were hardly any better at scheduling it). Curb Your Enthusiasm is exclusive to BBC4, apparently because other channels didn’t want to pick it up due to its quirky nature. Here it’s spearheading BBC4′s attempt to “gain a sense of humour”, and it certainly looks a bright spot in an otherwise worthy-but-dull schedule. Yes, it means that it’s hardly like to grab a big audience – indeed the second episode was watched by less than 20,000 people – but on this of all channels it should mean that this doesn’t matter (and if they drop it for that reason, I’m going to throw away my television).

The most obvious difference between the two is that whereas Seinfeld looked like every other American sitcom, and the subversion came in the scripts, this looks odd from the start. It’s all shot on videotape, with mostly hand-held cameras, in real locations. The other big difference is that every scene is improvised from a basic structure. This could have been a bad move – witness Operation Good Guys, subject of OTT’s most complained about review, which was appalling because the improvisation meant the whole thing was sprawling and completely lacked focus. Here, though, the cast all have the talent to do it well, and it works in this context because it makes the dialogue seem much more realistic. And that’s essential because, as with Seinfeld, the show is all about seemingly trivial incidents, and the reactions that they spawn.

The set-up sees Larry David star as, basically, himself. This isn’t the same situation as Jerry Seinfeld playing the character Jerry Seinfeld, sharing a name and an occupation but with a different life situation. Larry is Larry, a well-off comedy writer and producer. Indeed, throughout the show there are constant references to Larry’s previous career as the brains behind Seinfeld – his wife even trying to get him to mention it to a waitress so they can get a table in a restaurant. The bonus here is that when guests appear, they do so in a completely uncontrived way. So Ted Danson appears as Larry’s mate, but this isn’t in the show as an attempt to show off a special guest star, it’s simply accepted – because Ted Danson may well be Larry’s mate. It also works for me because the life of a comedy writer does seem pretty glamorous and exciting.

Both of the opening two episodes span off from seemingly irrelevant incidents – in the first, Larry went out with a pair of trousers that made it look like he had an erection, while in the second, someone took his shoes in a bowling alley. In many ways the plots work like a standard sitcom – it’s all about misunderstandings, coincidences and embarrassments and how they conspire against Larry. But it marries this with hugely naturalistic dialogue. Take the moment where Larry found the man who took his shoes, and confronted him. In a normal sitcom, this situation might end with an argument, or piece of farce where Larry tries to take them back. Here, though, Larry asks him for the shoes, and after a discussion about the odd situation, he gets them back, and that’s the end of the matter. Of course, this then informs the next bit of the plot – Larry has a replacement pair on order, which he then cancels to the salesman’s irritation – but that particular scene is simply concluded in a straightforward manner.

Indeed, it’s the realistic way that the show works that makes it highly unusual as a sitcom. The second episode revolves around Ted Danson and his wife Mary Steenburgen inviting Larry and his wife Cheryl to watch a Paul Simon concert from their private box. Ted and Mary don’t call back, though, and Larry and Cheryl assume they’d changed their mind, with Larry presuming he’d upset Mary’s mother. In fact, Larry and Cheryl just got the wrong day. It’s not much of a plot twist, no, but in the end it’s not about the conclusion, it’s about how they get there. Basically the crux of each show is that Larry gets himself in an awkward situation, and suffers some embarrassment, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. Hence the simple conclusions.

What’s important on the show is the dialogue. What’s great is that most scenes tend to be followed by Larry, Cheryl and the rest of the cast discussing what’s just occurred. This isn’t to hammer the jokes home, but to show people’s reactions and opinions to the situations. That’s why Curb Your Enthusiasm looks to be one of the shows that rewards repeated viewing – you can imagine that, as you get to know the characters better, you’ll really warm to them and get into their way of thinking, and then the situations they get into will start to ring true. I certainly want to spend more time with Larry and Cheryl. It also helps that there are no stupid characters – everyone is likeable and intelligent.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is not the sort of show that’ll make you laugh out loud – there are few jokes, for a start. But I sat through it with a huge grin on my face, simply wallowing in the smart dialogue and great characterisation. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see it appealing to a wider audience, because it’s so unlike anything else, and so it’ll probably continue to play to a tiny band of viewers on a digital channel. But to be honest, I always quite liked the way there were only a few of us staying up for Seinfeld, it almost felt like you were in an exclusive club. So there’s some sort of frisson in being one of the 20,000 watching Larry do his stuff. But I bet that practically every one of us returns next week, and every week after that.

Most people are lucky if they can come up with one sublime series in their career. Larry David has now created two.