On Sunday, it&rsquo;s time for that HBO comedy about that nebbishy guy who can&rsquo;t stop digging himself into huge holes. Oh, and also <strong>&ldquo;Curb Your Enthusiasm&rdquo;</strong> is back for another season.</p><p>All right, that may be a cheap comparison &mdash; what TV comedy hasn&rsquo;t involved a guy, his mouth and a big shovel? But given the kind of sitcoms HBO has been unloading on its paying customers lately, the arrival of Jason Schwartzman in <strong>&ldquo;Bored to Death&rdquo;</strong> ought to give solace to those who would wonder if another high-concept HBO comedy would ever see the light of day. </p><p>The fact that &ldquo;Curb&rdquo; is about a loudmouthed Hollywood producer with more money than sense and &ldquo;Bored&rdquo; is about a quiet New York novelist half his age is an irrelevant distinction. &ldquo;Curb&rdquo; creator Larry David may have recently graced a magazine cover with Woody Allen for a story declaring them the &ldquo;last of the schlemiels,&rdquo; but there&rsquo;s a case to be made that &ldquo;Bored to Death&rdquo; is &ldquo;Curb&rsquo;s&rdquo; slacker offspring.</p><p>In other words, don&rsquo;t hate it immediately just because it isn&rsquo;t &ldquo;Curb,&rdquo; because if you love &ldquo;Curb&rdquo; you might eventually like &ldquo;Bored to Death.&rdquo; Yet, show creator Jonathan Ames knows he is tempting fate by giving the show the title he did.</p><p>&ldquo;I hope that the reviewers won&rsquo;t be like, &lsquo;&ensp;&ldquo;Bored to Death?&rdquo; We certainly were!&rsquo; &mdash; but I don&rsquo;t want to write your sentences for you, so just erase that from your mind,&rdquo; Ames said.</p><p>Based on a short story he had published in McSweeney&rsquo;s, &ldquo;Bored to Death&rdquo; concerns an author named Jonathan Ames (Schwartzman) who is working, not very hard, on his second novel when his girlfriend dumps him and moves out.</p><p>&ldquo;I told you months ago that if this was going to work, you were going to have to stop drinking and smoking pot,&rdquo; the soon-to-be-ex tells him.</p><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s <em>dangerous</em> to go cold turkey,&rdquo; Ames replies. &ldquo;They give it to cancer patients!&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t have cancer,&rdquo; she says.</p><p>&ldquo;Not <em>yet</em>,&rdquo; he says.</p><p>And that is the end of the involvement of the female species as intimates in Jonathan&rsquo;s life. From now on, they will be customers. That&rsquo;s because, in a moment of clarity or stupidity, Jonathan decides to live out his fantasy, fueled by those 1940s pulp novels he devours, to become a private detective. He puts an ad on Craigslist offering his services as a private detective. Within hours, the proverbial damsels in distress are ringing his phone off the proverbial hook. (Cell phones, of course, don&rsquo;t have hooks.) </p><p>When his best friend Ray (Zach Galifianikis) learns about this new sideline, he can&rsquo;t believe it. </p><p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s illegal!&rdquo; he says.</p><p>&ldquo;Why? I say that I don&rsquo;t have a license, and that makes it more legal &hellip; ish,&rdquo; Jonathan insists. &ldquo;I have read so many of these detective novels that I <em>know what to do</em>. I can help people.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;Jonathan, I consider myself a very open-minded friend. Half the people I know are disturbed. But you cannot just go around and say that you&rsquo;re a detective. You can&rsquo;t mess with other people&rsquo;s lives like that. You can barely lead your own life.&rdquo;</p><p>Indeed, most cases end badly in one way or another (at least initially) for our hero. But while the Philip Marlowe fantasies help give each episode the beginning-middle-end structure required by situation comedy, the beating heart of this show consists of these gentle, often hilarious conversations between Jonathan and Ray or Jonathan and his nutty editor, George (Ted Danson).