It’s a good time to be a Curb Your Enthusiasm completist. With the new, feverishly anticipated series just days away, obsessives have been able to rewatch all the old episodes, enjoy interviews with the key players – cranky ones with Larry David, stream-of-consciousness ones with Richard Lewis – and listen to the remarkably in-depth Origins podcast about the show’s conception.

But Netflix has just uploaded perhaps the biggest curio of them all. It’s called Long Shot, and it’s basically Curb Your Enthusiasm: the true crime documentary.

No, really. Long Shot tells the story of how Curb Your Enthusiasm helped an innocent man to avoid death row.

In May 2003, a 16-year-old girl named Martha Puebla was shot to death on the doorstep of her Los Angeles home, days after testifying about two murders allegedly committed by her ex-boyfriend Jose Ledesma. Some months later, police arrested 24-year-old Juan Catalan for Puebla’s death. Catalan, the police reasoned, carried out the hit on the orders of Ledesma and Catalan’s brother Mario. He was placed behind bars pending trial; if found guilty, he would have received the death penalty.

However, Catalan had an alibi. When Puebla was murdered, he claimed he was at Dodger Stadium, watching the home team get defeated by the Atlanta Braves.

You could write off Long Shot as generic true crime – but then comes Larry David. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

So far, so Netflix. Long Shot is brimming with all the true-crime tropes you’re used to by now. A grisly crime. An innocent man. An overzealous police force. Newsprint. Television footage. Jittery music. Talking heads in extreme closeup. If you’ve seen any of these offerings before, you’ll be quick to write off Long Shot as utterly generic.

And then comes Larry David.

If you’ve managed to avoid any mention of this story and want to preserve the twist, stop reading now. Although Catalan’s lawyer tried and failed to find footage of Catalan in Dodger Stadium at the time of the murder – neither the DodgerVision or live TV footage of the game showed Catalan distinctly enough to let him off – it just so happened that an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (season four’s The Car Pool Lane, in which Larry hires a prostitute who then gets his father high on pot) was also filming at the stadium that night.

A one in a million chance … Long Shot. Photograph: Netflix

It was footage shot for Curb Your Enthusiasm – timecodes and all – that got Catalan’s case dismissed. Better yet, in the footage that got him off, Catalan brushes right against Larry, seconds before Larry raises his arms in a gesture of mock triumph. Looking back it seems completely orchestrated, although in reality it was a one in a million chance.

Larry David is interviewed for Long Shot. And he’s what makes the film worth watching, right from the moment he’s caught absentmindedly whistling while waiting for the film equipment to be set up. His appearance is nothing short of a Larry David masterclass, as he wrestles the nervy, teary-eyed tone into something far more sardonic. Catalan’s lawyer calls Larry a “mega-huge Hollywood star”; Larry responds with a withering eye-roll. Catalan cries with gratitude; Larry shrugs off the whole incident as “Maybe something I could impress a date with”. Welcome back, Larry.

Long Shot is available on Netflix now.