"Larry Sanders: the greatest TV show ever?"

[Booharv]

Garry Shandling as Larry (left) with actor David Duchovny Photo: Larry Watson/AP

A well-kept secret is about to become a little less closely guarded, with the release this week on DVD of the first season (of six, 1992-1998) of what many of those lucky enough to have seen it (on BBC2, late at night, years ago) regard as possibly the best TV show ever made.

There are a total of 89 episodes of HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, and this batch, the first 13, slip down like nectar – a deliciously bittersweet nectar, perhaps – in a couple of evenings (they’re only about 25 minutes long, but – just as the best short stories feel like compressed novels – these gems of wit, economy, insight and irony are as rich as features).

Its likely main inspiration?

Scorsese’s devastating, prescient 1982 The King of Comedy (name-checked in the fourth show), a bleakly courageous dissection of the psychopathology of celebrity culture as it was taking its present form, in which Robert De Niro’s talentless creep Rupert Pupkin, obsessed with becoming famous, kidnaps Jerry Langdon (played by, and closely based on, Jerry Lewis) in order to blackmail the network into giving him his break on national TV.

Its most identifiable descendants (though its influence is everywhere)?

Extras by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, and the amusing but comparatively toothless 30 Rock – though Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Alan Partridge and The Office have also been mentioned in the same breath, with some justice.

Nothing, however, has exceeded its power to shock, amuse, unsettle and dazzle with its dry, sharp intelligence and verve.

So what is it?

It’s a darkly comic, highly allusive, wryly self-reflexive, uncensored (because it's HBO) sitcom about a neurotic late-night TV chat-show host (rivalling Jay Leno and David Letterman, who are constantly referred to) and offers in essence a highly corrosive analysis of the treacherous world of television entertainment, while providing intensely entertaining television.

The distinctive features?

The Sidekick. We nearly always start with Hank Kingsley (Jeffrey Tambor) warming up the audience, always with the same routine ("This is exciting, isn’t it?" and "And now, live on tape from Hollywood...!"). The tall, bald, creepy, deep-voiced Hank is a greedy egotist with even less dignity than most of his colleagues, less a straight man than a butt (and, at some level, he knows it: "I’m tired of being your personal village idiot!" he tells Larry at one of the quite frequent moments when he reveals an alarmingly, hilariously ugly side).

Tambor is an actor of genius and courage – he’s one of the great, cringe-makingly embarrassing villains. He is constantly mocked by others on the show for his meaningless catchphrase, "Hey now!"

The Monologue. Almost every show has a little of Larry’s opening monologue, with his current-affairs jokes about the first President Bush, Dan Quayle, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton, and his catchphrase – "No flipping!" – as the first ad-break rips in. But we keep on watching Larry during the breaks – this is a show within a show.

Its unsettling perspective is conveyed when we cut back from the close-up TV image of Larry to a high long-shot of him from the back of the studio. We feel the pressure, the anxiety of disproportionate, unearned celebrity. The seasoned Carol Burnett scathingly comments when Larry is having a bad time: "They’ll give a talk show to anyone these days."

Artie. Larry’s producer (played by the great Rip Torn, who won an Emmy for the role) is another great monster, only more lovable – an utterly cynical old-timer enveloped by a cloud of quasi-Falstaffian false bonhomie, brimful of unreconstructed at udes, who keeps the show on the road by flattering Larry, whom he cherishes and despises in a richly symbiotic relationship. He is quite ruthless in sacrificing all human feelings and decencies to the success of his baby.

The guests. The guests on the show (including Dana Carvey, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman) play themselves, under their own names – but the roles are written so fiercely and tightly they often shock us by the degree of their two-facedness, or simply their meanness.

The effect is not so much to make us naively think this is what the real person is like, as to make us wonder about that person’s motives for collaborating in this superb, ulative portrayal of a sick society.

The staff. The rest of the em[ployees in the office – the writers Phil (Wallace Langham) and Jerry (Jeremy Piven), the talent booker Paula (the acidic Janeanne Garofalo), Larry’s personal assistant Beverly (Penny Johnson), Hank’s put-upon assistant Darlene (Linda Doucett), and assorted underlings and loathesome executives – are so vivid and yet complex we feel we both know them and don’t know them – they’re full of surprises.

The vision is so consistent across the episodes, as we see their desperation, their ready self-abasement, their bursts of self-assertion, their wit, their cruelty, their occasional decency, that the brutal truths being told about show business – about life, and work – register in flesh and blood and trauma.

Garry Shandling himself seems to have recognised how hard it would be to follow this show, and hasn’t done much since (he’s now 61). His plastic, smiley face and big hair, so perfect in this context, make him a non-obvious romantic lead.

The curious will seek out the show’s predecessor, a bizarre, experimental, rather hit-and-miss sitcom called It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (recently out on DVD).

Alumni of the show on the producing-writing side (there were many of them) include Judd (Knocked Up) Apatow, Maya (Monsters Vs Aliens) Forbes, and Peter (Analyse This) Tolan. But The Larry Sanders Show is a unique formula, a collaborative achievement never to be surpassed. We just have to hope that the remaining 76 episodes will come to DVD to be cherished as they deserve.

'The Larry Sanders Show: The Complete First Season' (MediumRare Entertainment) is out now. Philip Horne is a Professor of English Literature at UCL.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...show-ever.html

[Booharv]

Excited to see this show is finally coming to DVD. Definitely one of the funniest shows ever. In addition to Garry Shandling, it had Jeremy Piven in the early going, Janeane Garofolo in the only thing she's ever been good or even tolerable in imo, Bob Odenkirk, but mainly Rip Torn and Jeffrey Tambor who were phenomenal plus a million celebrity cameos. Its mainly written by Shandling and Peter Tolan who wrote Analyze This, and created Rescue Me. Judd Appatow was also a writer on this show for six years. Appatow, Shandling, and Tolan all are doing audio commentaries for the DVD.

Rickey Gervais has fellated this show repeatedly and cited it as having the biggest influence on The Office, and quite frankly its a lot better than both versions of that show (http://www.rickygervais.com/uncut.php).

The Daily Telegraph is a newspaper from London which has the largest circulation in the UK, so its pretty cool having an article like this in there. It was in reruns there for a while, and before this I was only able to see all the episodes via a torrent that was from the recorded UK channel 4 reruns.

[mrsmaalox]

It was a great show

[Veterinarian]

To answer the thread le, yes imho. Really helped by the fact that Shandling had spent years as a guest host for Johnny Carson and used his knowledge of the backstage atmosphere to create a great satire of what its like on the set of a Late Night talk show. Plus unlike The Office where Steve Carell is basically a cartoon character, every character in this show is pretty believable and realistic.

Curb Your Enthusiasm and 30 Rock are also highly "inspired" by this show.

[AaronY]

Gave this show a shot after seeing it appear 6 times in the top 50 seasons ever on Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/browse/tv/.../all?sort=desc

Its pretty awesome imo