You are correct, I think the [0,len(xs)]
is throwing you off. You'll want to reuse the original x-axis variable xs
and plot that with another numpy array of the same length that has your variable in it.
annual = np.arange(1,21,1)
l = np.array(value_list) # a list with 20 values
spl = UnivariateSpline(annual,l)
xs = np.linspace(1,21,200)
plt.plot(xs,spl(xs),'b')
#####horizontal line
horiz_line_data = np.array([40 for i in xrange(len(xs))])
plt.plot(xs, horiz_line_data, 'r--')
###########plt.plot([0,len(xs)],[40,40],'r--',lw=2)
pylab.ylim([0,200])
plt.show()
Hopefully that fixes the problem!