The signs were never especially positive that Curb Your Enthusiasm would last half a season never mind work its way through 12 of them. Firstly, there’s that title: clunky, unwieldy, awkward: no wonder people generally slice off two thirds to just make it the C-word (and there were plenty of those down the years). Secondly, Larry David was no doubt a little shaken by an outpouring of disdain for the way Seinfeld (an era-defining sitcom he co-created with its lead star) ended just two years prior to Curb’s first proper episode in October 2000 (there was a one-hour documentary-style special the previous year which hinted at what was coming).

And was anyone really in the mood for a largely improvised comedy about how the normal stuff of life (buying gifts, test-driving cars, picking up prescriptions, squeezing past people in the cinema) can lead to conflict and chaos? Except, of course, Curb was leaning effortlessly into the prevailing cultural winds, given that docu-style comedy actually became the defining genre of that decade. So, David (unlikely style icon, unlikely sex symbol, unlikely Everyman, unlikely... everything) took a simple concept in which he would dial his own personality up a notch or four. Then he hired some comedy friends (Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin, Richard Lewis) and later a swathe of famous people either playing themselves (John McEnroe, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, Michael J Fox) or portraying fictional creations (Vince Vaughn, Isla Fisher, Randall Park, Steve Coogan) and made a stupendously profane cult hit. 

Here we explore which season finales worked brilliantly, which ones worked almost as brilliantly and, if we absolutely had to, which ones we would kick to the kerb (if you'll pardon the pun). At this point, we should invoke the NOW TV announcer’s standard Curb warning: ‘the following contains very strong language and adult humour from the outset’. And is also a spoiler alert nightmare... 

The brilliant

Season two climaxes with ‘The Massage’ in which Larry halts a ‘happy ending’ mid-pump but his guilty conscience is so overwhelming that he believes his wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) will discover the truth when she visits a psychic. For season ten’s finale, Larry’s lingering feud with coffee-shop owner Mocha Joe results in the opening and subsequent burning down of Latte Larry’s; this ‘spite store’ endeavour inspires celebs such as Sean Penn, Mila Kunis and Jonah Hill to open their own enterprises next door to businesses who have pissed them off. And number 11 closes with Larry upsetting Alexander Vindman (the US Army colonel who blew the whistle on Trump for a dodgy phone call he made to Zelensky), a Mormon couple, and his current partner, city councilwoman Irma Kostroski (Tracey Ullman) who he’s only dating to get a law changed about the height of fences around swimming pools.   

If you could lose two

Given that we can’t possibly lay into any of Curb’s closing episodes, let’s imagine an alternative universe in which the series was ten seasons in total and is, in fact, about to end its game-changing run with episode 100. That would be neat, right? Except this would mean dropping two seasons and hence two finales. Without overthinking it too much (how very un-Curb), and considering we obviously need to keep the final-finale on Monday, which pair of episodes could be consigned to this imaginary cutting-room floor?

How about the first season’s finale, with Larry attending an incest-survivor meeting to simply provide moral support for an old girlfriend but ends up concocting a story that he himself was abused? And the fifth season with Larry dying on the operating table before experiencing heaven accompanied by a full head of hair? Having argued with two celestial attendants (Dustin Hoffman and Sacha Baron Cohen), his attempts to have sex with Marilyn Monroe are thwarted when it’s decided he’s not ready for the afterlife and is sent back to make a miraculous recovery in hospital. Still great episodes, but something has to give here. To quote Larry: ‘soooorrryyyyyyyyy’.

The totally brilliant

Ah, but these ones though, we simply couldn’t live without. All the meta storylines slot into this category: season nine which includes Larry’s ongoing Hamilton-esque feud with Lin-Manuel Miranda as they attempt to co-produce Fatwa! (a jaunty musical based on Salman Rushdie’s death sentence); season four with Mel Brooks casting Larry as Max Bialystock in the latest Broadway incarnation of The Producers (initially alongside Ben Stiller who finally quits after one clash with Larry too many, and then David Schwimmer) in order to destroy the show’s reputation.

And then there’s the most postmodern artefact of them all, the Seinfeld reunion episodes of season seven which Larry only agreed to pen in order to win back his wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), surreptitiously undercutting Jerry’s wishes and foisting her into the key role of George’s ex-wife. As is the way with Curb, it all unravels thanks to a very ordinary problem: in this instance, a coffee stain.

Add to those, season six’s ender is sublime if only for Larry’s new girlfriend (Vivica A Fox) tearing a strip off a visibly stunned Susie Greene (Susie Essman) who has come round to castigate him for his latest misdemeanour, while season eight (the New York one) ties up with Larry temporarily relocating to Paris after an unseemly spat over Michael J Fox’s Parkinson’s, and almost immediately goes toe-to-toe with a Frenchman over some terrible parking.

The finale of finales

Well folks, it has to be season three with its broad arc of Larry investing in a new restaurant alongside the likes of Jeff ‘Big Bowl Of Wrong’ Greene (Jeff Garlin), Ted ‘Heaven’ Danson and Michael ‘Bum Fuck Turd Fart Cunt Piss Shit Bugger... And Balls!’ York. This run also includes two of the most gleefully enjoyable episodes in Curb’s history: ‘Club Soda And Salt’ (whose final shot literally ties together four maybe even five different plot strands) and ‘Krazee-Eyez Killa’ (Larry’s superb breeze-shooting with Chris Willams’ rapper is a precursor to the linguistic gymnastics he later enjoys on a more regular basis with JB Smoove’s Leon Black).

Throughout this season, we get generous doses of uber-Larry: hiring a bald chef then firing them on discovering that he wears a toupée; rejecting Ted’s personal chef due to the job-interview/audition dinner being ‘a little saucy’; accidentally injuring a feared restaurant critic during an increasingly aggressive game of dodgeball.

All of which leads to this finale of finales. A couple of days before the grand opening, it dawns on everyone that they’ve hired a Gallic head chef with a strong vision (hates olives and salmon), and an even stronger dose of Tourette’s, and who works his kitchen in full view (and appalled earshot) of the dining area: ‘why doesn’t he curse in French?’ muses Larry.

At the beginning of this episode, Larry spots some high-school boys who have shaved their heads in solidarity with a friend undergoing chemotherapy, and wishes he could do a gesture like that one day. Well, that day soon arrives when their chef silences the chatting diners with a blast of involuntary expletives. Larry has a flashback to the schoolkids and then unleashes his own torrent of filth. Soon, the whole place is rocking as one to the cacophonous sound of obscenities including ‘pussy pigfucker’ (Richard Lewis) to ‘boy cock girl cock E-I-E-I-O’ (Jeff’s dad) and the aforementioned Michael York diatribe (just in case you thought that was in any way merely gratuitous). For once, Larry looks content as the restaurant, like his sitcom, is a genuine sensation.

Curb Your Enthusiasm finale is on Sky Atlantic/NOW TV, Monday 8 April; all episodes are available (for a limited time) on NOW TV.