TV Eye: When fiction becomes stranger than real life

The fictional Larry David is the version the real Larry David wishes he could be in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Photo / Supplied

I came over just a bit snuffley when the Entourage boys slouched off after eight uneven seasons. Why did it have to get good again, just at the end? Actually the last episode was pretty wonky. At least as wonky as Adrian Grenier's acting - or was he just acting as badly as his character? Or as badly as the fat, mumbling cocaine dealer in Medellin. There's a real/fake website for Medellin and people really debate why it (a fictional film within a fiction) was so bad.

There are a lot of Entourage nuts out there. I've been a loyal Entourage nut, although not so nutty I'd ever go online to discuss a movie that isn't real (if a movie can be real ...) but that last episode, snuffles aside, was a big, lousy cliffhanger for Entourage, The Movie. That seems like cheating, somehow and as much as I love the boys, the idea of watching Adrian Grenier not act at being a movie star who can't act, the idea of watching this for longer than half an hour holds no appeal.

Really, I loved Ari and his temper: He was vile, money-grubbing, loyal and his mouth was lethal. He was one of the worst (and best) characters on television.

Never mind, the real misanthrope is back. Compared to Larry David, the fictional one, Ari was a good guy. The fictional one? He's the guy the real Larry David wishes he could be, and gets to be, on his show, about himself. Who knows how rotten the real Larry David is? But I did read an interview with Ted Danson, a regular on previous seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, who said the real Larry David stayed in his guest house for months and then told him he didn't have a part in this, the eighth season.

The reason Larry was living at Ted's was that he was getting a divorce. So season eight (TV2, Wednesdays, 11.40pm) opens with Larry and Cheryl getting a divorce. Well, good. I can't stand that do-gooding Cheryl. Larry's real life, now ex-wife was a keen environmentalist. The real Larry joked that when he left their house when they separated, he turned all the lights on. Joked?

That's the sort of childish Larry trick we've come to expect. But maybe I'm getting my real Larry confused with the fictional Larry. I suspect they're like horror movie twins: the good twin and the bad twin linked together, forever. Except that both Larrys are the bad twin.

He hired a divorce lawyer, because he thought he was Jewish. He's Swedish. "She's going to get everything." He hires a lawyer who really is Jewish. She gets the house. This is karma. He said, at the start, to the Jewish lawyer who turned out to be Swedish: "I got to be a good guy." The Swede said: "You'll look like a good guy." Larry: "I don't really want to be a good guy." He's been practising facial tics to try out on dates. He tries this out on his ex-wife, and asks what she'd think if she was on a date with a guy with facial tics. If she knew he was doing it on purpose: "I'd think he was an arsehole."

You don't love or hate this stuff; you hate loving it. It's almost unwatchable.

Unlike Downton Abbey which really is, already, unwatchable. There have been moans about intrusions of the real world - a TV aerial!, use of words that weren't in use in 1912. I can't get outraged about such things. I don't really believe there's a place in Manchester where they carry on like Corrie. But the latest storyline, the return of the heir, Patrick, who was supposed to have gone down with the Titanic, but who had amnesia, became Canadian and is now burnt beyond any hope of recognition ... He buggered off so quickly you have to hope the writers realised we'd all be sitting at home scoffing, but really, talk about treating your viewers like morons. That's it. I'm getting a divorce from Downton.

-TimeOut