Recently, I seem to get in disputes - at home, in the pub - about which is the greatest television series ever made: The Wire or The Sopranos? It even came up in an interview with an artist who told me that "The Wire is methadone for Sopranos addicts". But, of course, this is all completely wide of the mark, because the greatest television series ever made is Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.
We still don't have a language to praise comedy as highly as we praise "serious" drama. Perhaps conceptual art provides that language. In the John Baldessari retrospective currently at Tate Modern, you see a series of brilliant conceptual gags: this exhibition reminds you how a certain comic style crept into American art and literature in the 1960s and 70s, from Baldessari to Thomas Pynchon, and how strong a lineage runs from that to Matt Groening's comic strip Life in Hell and The Simpsons.
Larry David probably doesn't see himself as a conceptual artist. In an episode of Seinfeld (which he co-created), his alter ego, George, gets into a typically humiliating situation when he accidentally promises to buy a painting. And in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is nonplussed when asked to provide a reference for someone who wants to get an job in the art world.
But this is television as high-concept art, and it is by far the most truthful, human drama you're ever likely to see on the small screen. It's great news that a new season is here because, after juggling everything so brilliantly, the sixth series seemed to think itself into an impasse.
The Wire? The Sopranos? They seem a bit childish compared with Larry David's hilariously difficult adult world.
