From left, actors Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Jeremy Piven, Adrian Grenier and Jerry Ferrara live the Hollywood lifestyle in the hit cable television show Entourage. (HBO Canada)

No other contemporary TV series includes as many flattering showbiz cameos as Entourage, so it was only fitting that the show scored a few fresh coups when its sixth season bowed out on Oct. 4. In the final episodes, an uncharacteristically humourless Matt Damon bullied Entourage's hero, movie star Vincent Chase (Adrien Grenier), into contributing to his OneXOne charity; Damon even enlisted Bono and LeBron James to increase the pressure.

What was initially intoxicating about both Entourage and Californication has come to seem increasingly toxic.

Spoofing their own reputations as do-gooders, the trio's cameos added some spark to a series that has become fatally drab. This is especially unfortunate for a TV show that purported to reveal the private side of stardom in all its glorious excess. The HBO series was hardly the first to make that claim, but it boasted the imprimatur of a genuine star, Mark Wahlberg, who helped develop the show with members of his real-life entourage.

The series follows Vincent Chase and his pals from Queens, who avail themselves of the perks of Vincent's stardom – beautiful and available women, mainly. In its first two seasons, Entourage was a potent and often witty mix of showbiz satire and straight-dude fantasy. Focused on four friends who were more loyal to each other than to their conquests, it could be described as an XY counterpart to Sex and the City, which finished its run on HBO in 2004, the year Entourage debuted.

Like Entourage, the Showtime series Californication offers views of the good life, L.A. style. Now in its third season, the latter concerns Hank Moody (David Duchovny), an amoral, self-destructive writer who moves from New York to L.A. to oversee the film adaptation of one of his novels. Hank's puerile behaviour and sexual promiscuity gained a disturbing real-life echo when Duchovny himself checked into rehab for sex addiction last year.

David Duchovny plays a troubled novelist with complicated relationships in Californication. (Movie Central)

Entourage's cocktail of ostentatious consumerism and breezy hedonism was fun in limited doses, as were Californication's salacious tales of Hank's libido. The implication is that these bad boys are merely products of their environment, which is an overlapping series of McMansion monstrosities, Malibu getaways and West Hollywood hotspots. But what was initially intoxicating about both series has come to seem increasingly toxic. The two shows may have originally intended to satirize the lifestyles of the rich and the not-necessarily-famous, but now seem content merely to indulge their narcissistic characters.

Having already charted Vincent Chase's rise, slight fall, greater rise, greater fall and inevitable recovery over the first five seasons, there wasn't much left for Entourage to do in season six. With Vince enjoying some career stability again (complicated only by the short-lived threat of a stalker), the writers hinged the latest episodes on the relationship dramas facing Eric (Kevin Connolly) and Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and yet more temper tantrums by agent Ari Gold (the ever-apoplectic Jeremy Piven). Before Matt Damon and Bono showed up to save the day, the most memorable cameos in season six were by family-unfriendly comedian Bob Saget, an underemployed David Schwimmer and an ever-more-desperate-seeming 50 Cent.

Meanwhile, Californication continues to exist as a testament to Hank's virility. "You find me irresistible," he tells one helpless victim in a recent episode.

"I find you irritating," she replies.

"Careful," Hank warns. "That's how it starts."

There's a nagging familiarity to the scandalous behaviour of the showbiz folk we see here. It's the same California narcissism that writers have long targeted – the canon of L.A.-is-evil literature ranges from golden-age-of-Hollywood satires like Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust (1939) and Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) to Joan Didion's essay collection The White Album and Bruce Wagner's Still Holding (2003), a novel that has nearly as many celeb cameos as Entourage.

What set the template for the current shows is Robert Altman's film The Player (1992), which ushered in an unprecedented wave of Hollywood satires that would include Swimming with Sharks (1994), The Muse (1999) and TV shows like Action! and Beggars and Choosers. Whereas Altman's film was razor-sharp, each successive version of the template got a little weaker, as the Hollywood inside job became just another subgenre — or another means for B-listers to make a few extra bucks by trading on their fading lustre.

Writer/producer/comedian Larry David, left, has actors like Jerry Seinfeld play themselves to comedic effect on Curb Your Enthusiasm. (HBO Canada)

There are recent indications that movies and TV shows about the biz have run out of gas. Barry Levinson's 2008 film What Just Happened and an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' L.A.-is-really-really-evil story collection The Informers both struggled to find film distributors before getting desultory releases. Lisa Kudrow's HBO series The Comeback and Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had short lives on TV.

After poor ratings in its fifth season, Entourage posted better numbers for season six, but that's likely because it had the good fortune to follow the red-hot True Blood. (Californication has also benefited from its proximity to Dexter on the Showtime schedule.)

Another show with an L.A. setting has escaped the fatigue that besets Entourage and Californication. But then Curb Your Enthusiasm, which recently came back for its seventh season, has always been less about California or showbiz than the inexhaustible pettiness of Larry David, or at least the version of himself he plays on the show.

Curb seems sprightlier than it's been in some time thanks to its Seinfeld reunion storyline. But rather than trade in male fantasies of wealth and potency, the show derives its power and humour from a painfully true portrayal of the anxieties and frailties that beset even those of us who aren't wealthy Californians. And whereas the guys on Entourage and Californication are continually rewarded for their solipsism, Larry is never far from a comeuppance. He can't get away with anything, which means he lives in a universe most of us know all too well.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto and author of the novel Showbiz.