YADDA, YADDA, YADDA TWO HBO SHOWS FEATURE NEUROTIC MEN, BUT ONLY ONE TURNS GRIPING INTO GOLD.

Tonight, HBO introduces a new hour of programming that could go by the moniker ``Middle-Age White Guy's Kvetch-a-Thon.'' It's anchored by the second season of Larry David's acclaimed, improvised comedy ``Curb Your Enthusiasm,'' which would actually be a much more appropriate title for the new comedy, Mike Binder's ``The Mind of the Married Man.''

In Larry David's universe, no deed - good, bad or neutral - goes unpunished. In ``Curb Your Enthusiasm,'' David essentially plays himself, an underemployed but ridiculously wealthy comedian coasting on his success with ``Seinfeld.''

His manager, Jeff (Jeff Garlin), is constantly urging him to return to work, but Larry will have none of it. He blows off a potential project with Jason Alexander - who insults David by observing that his ``Seinfeld'' character George is a jerk (Seinfeld and David based the character on Larry himself) - because the actor insists on having development meetings at his office.

As with ``Seinfeld,'' ``Curb Your Enthusiasm'' is ingeniously plotted, with every apparent throwaway joke eventually working itself into a major headache for Larry. Tonight, he and his wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), are planning to move into a new house (last season, a wire traversing their backyard view ruined their old home for them) just as Larry gets it in his head that he'd make a good car salesman. The mere idea of Larry David trying to cozy up to prospective customers is funny, and David makes a lot of the gag without exhausting it.

In future episodes, the ongoing sitcom-with-Jason-Alexander saga continues, while his manager goes through a separation and his wife suspects he has a fetish for women with large derrieres, and kudos to David for being the first to wring a successful sitcom plot out of those Big Brother-esque cameras tracking down traffic infractions. David combines the history of the Cobb Salad with the anti-Semitism of the German composer Wagner in one episode, in which he also tries to pass off disparaging remarks about his baldness as a hate crime (he also declares to a man accusing him of Jewish self-loathing, ``I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish'').

In yet another, he tries to come to grips with seeing his (aging, portly male) therapist in a thong bathing suit while trying too hard to please Rob Reiner's latest cause du jour, with predictably disastrous results. ``Curb Your Enthusiasm'' is ``Seinfeld'' unexpurgated - inspired and hilarious, and selndulgent in the most venal and enjoyable way possible.

On the other hand, ``The Mind of the Married Man'' is simply selndulgent, a good example of how the artistic freedoms allowed by HBO are not necessarily a good thing (see also: ``Arli$$''). Mike Binder opens his series tonight with 10 minutes ruminating on self-gratification to Internet porn, followed by a gratuitous scene in which an attractive woman relieves herself.

``The Mind of the Married Man'' is the umpteenth variation on the guys- just-don't-get-it conceit, only slightly naughtier than you'd see on network TV. Binder (director of such little-seen films as ``The Sex Monster'' and ``Blankman'') stars as Mickey, a Chicago newspaper columnist who's ostensibly brilliant, though you never see him doing his job, just whining and fretting over his female troubles.

As written, Mickey's British wife, Donna (Sonya Walger), is a complete hodgepodge - she's either (understandably) irked and put out by his dithering eternal pubescence or a sexual wildcat who can't wait to please and appease him (why she wants to have a second child with him can only be chalked up to the mysteries of womanhood - or the mysteries of lame plot development). Mickey's also in a quandary over his recently hired assistant (columnists get assistants? I need to talk to my editor), Missy (Ivana Milicevic): He fantasizes about her but wants to remain faithful to Donna. This results in a lot of pseudo-neurotic babble that grows tiresome pretty quickly.

Sitting on Mickey's shoulders are an angel and a devil: Doug (Taylor Nichols) is his aggressively monogamous pal; Jake (Jake Weber) is his unabashedly womanizing friend. They apparently haven't changed a whit in their attitudes toward women since high school. Simply put, Mickey is both a divorce and a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.

Occasionally, Binder's scripting can uncork a sharp line or two - Mickey describes a couple's self-help video as ``like watching a pony die''; Doug says of Jake's using his married status to seduce women, ``That's not honest; that's factual.'' Overall, though, ``The Mind of the Married Man'' induces a lot of cringing - not because the truths he mines cut so close to the bone, but because you sense he's exploring his own peculiar peccadilloes in such an icky fashion.

``CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM''

What: Second-season premiere of Larry David's scabrous sitcom of about his lazy L.A. existence.

The stars: Larry David, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Garlin.

Where: HBO.

When: 10:30 tonight; hereafter, Sundays at 10:30 p.m. beginning Sept. 23, with repeats on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Check www.hbo.com.

Our rating: Three stars

``THE MIND OF THE MARRIED MAN''

What: Comic Mike Binder's look at contemporary sexual foibles that HBO declares in no way should be compared to ``Sex and the City.''

The stars: Mike Binder, Sonya Walger, Jake Weber, Taylor Nichols, Ivana Milicevic, M. Emmet Walsh.

Where: HBO.

When: 10 tonight; hereafter, 10 p.m. Sundays with various repeats. Schedules on www.HBO.com.

Our rating: Two stars

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Larry David and TV wife Cheryl Hines read in bed, an act that exemplifies the title of their HBO series ``Curb Your Enthusiasm,'' which begins its second season tonight. Below, Taylor Nichols, left, Mike Binder and Jake Weber star in ``The Mind of the Married Man,'' which should take its cue from better shows and come up with a more original premise.