TV Eye: Anything but kitchen shows

It has been a bit difficult to watch the television at our place recently. You can do it, but only if you sit on one end of a couch and crane your neck as you peer through the nest of other, newer, appliances which appeared to have colonised the living room while they wait for somebody to come and install them in the new kitchen.

But you don't want to hear about our new kitchen. Nobody does. Including me. Just one quick question: Has it gone well? Oh, ha ha. I really would rather watch paint dry than watch telly, just at the moment. Oh for there to be paint to watch dry.

There is an up-side. I am cured, forever, hopefully of watching those house makeover telly shows. I have gone so far as to have deleted all (well, almost all) of those My Skyed shows about folk who move to the country - or to another country - in the hope of finding the perfect life and perfect house.

Oh, ha ha. They're going to want to do up the kitchen. Stay put is my advice. I will never again laugh at the travails of those poor fools on Grand Designs, that show which revels in renovation disasters. But what am I going to watch while I'm waiting to be able to watch paint drying?

Here's a tip (other than never get your kitchen done), do not go the video shop and take out every episode of Entourage. We did. We got greedy. Now, having watched the lot, we have nothing to watch. Instant gratification is bad for you.

Watching Entourage's manic agent, Ari Gold, throw one of his uber-tantrums has to be good for your own blood pressure - nobody can match an Ari tantrum. I'd like to see an episode in which he gets his kitchen done. But I'm over kitchen shows. Still, I couldn't help but notice the fridge doors in the new series of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Those burr wood doors must be hell to clean.

You notice these things when this is the seventh season of the consistently brilliant and misanthropic vehicle used by Larry David to play the Larry David you imagine he'd really like to be, or perhaps is. This is the Seinfeld reunion season, but we have to wait until the third episode for anything resembling a reunion. And this is Larry David land, so you can imagine that the reunion will go as swimmingly as, say, the installation of a new kitchen.

Larry has more important things on his mind. He minds about most things. This is really a show about etiquette - there are ways to do things, there are moral choices to be made. Should a doctor making a housecall go to your fridge and help himself to a lemonade? Answer: no. Or yes: liquids might be okay; food is definitely not okay. That was the big issue.

The doctor is about to deliver the biopsy results of Larry's girlfriend, Loretta. He had to dump her before the results were delivered. Is it okay to dump somebody before the biopsy results are delivered? In Larry-land, yes. But only because it's not okay to dump somebody once the results show they have cancer. I suspect he'll find a way to justify it. Is it okay to have sex with a mental patient? Only if they're not in the bin at the time. But the burning issue: Is it okay to ask who will be at a dinner party before accepting an invitation? Apparently not.

I'm with Larry on this one. I always ask. It's a good way to get uninvited. And I've got better things to do at home, such as waiting to watch paint dry.