The Larry Sanders Show

The Larry Sanders Show
Image:Larry Sanders.jpg Larry Sanders Show Logo
Genre	Comedy
Creator(s)	Dennis Klein & Garry Shandling
Starring	Garry Shandling Rip Torn Jeffrey Tambor Penny Johnson Wallace Langham Janeane Garofalo
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	89
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	HBO
Original run	August 15, 1992 – May 31, 1998
Links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Larry Sanders Show was a satirical television sitcom that originally aired from 1992 to 1998 on the HBO cable television network in the USA. It starred stand-up comedian Garry Shandling as vain, neurotic talk show host Larry Sanders.

The series, which was partly inspired by Shandling's stint as a guest host on The Tonight Show, is ranked by many critics and fans alongside Seinfeld as one of the best TV comedies of the 1990s. [1]

Premise

Setting

The series was a unique satire of the behind-the-scenes problems and relationships of a network talk show host, his staff and their guests. The plot and situations found in each episode drew heavily from the real-life world of shows like The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show (under both Johnny Carson and Jay Leno), and The Arsenio Hall Show, although many aspects were exaggerated.

Different kind of sitcom

The Larry Sanders Show was particularly notable because the off-stage segments of the show were shot in single-camera mode, using a film camera (although the "talk show" segments were shot on tape), and had no "laugh track" (most situation comedies are either taped before a live audience or dubbed with canned laughter), which gave it a behind-the-scenes documentary feel. However, it cleverly kept a foot in both camps, so to speak, because the 'on-stage' segments depicting the Larry Sanders Show in production were videotaped with a multiple-camera setup with a live audience—much like a real Tonight Show. However, according to an interview with Tom Shales, Shandling found this to be too time consuming, and after the first season only a select number of few "live" segments were taped in front of a studio audience.

Guests

Most episodes featured celebrity guests who usually played themselves appearing on the fictional Larry Sanders Show, and who were often the primary source of conflict between Sanders and his co-workers. Guests included Elvis Costello, Chris Farley, Sharon Stone, Jon Stewart, Danny DeVito, Rob Reiner, Jon Lovitz, David Spade, Dana Carvey, John Ritter, Bruno Kirby, and Ellen Degeneres among many others. One of the most memorable guest spots was the cameo appearance in the final episode by X-Files star David Duchovny, who performed a parody of the Sharon Stone 'flashing' scene from Basic Instinct. Also, there was a longtime running joke on the show involving comedian (and one of the series writers) Jeff Cesario about how he would be frequently "bumped" whenever he was booked to appear.

Regular cast and characters

In addition to Shandling, the show featured the following regular primary actors and characters [2][3]:

• Rip Torn as Arthur ("Artie"), the show's producer
• Jeffrey Tambor as Larry's sidekick Hank Kingsley
• Penny Johnson as Larry's personal assistant, Beverly
• Janeane Garofalo as the show's booker (until episode 71)
• Mary Lynn Rajskub as the show's booking assistant/booker (from episode 69) Mary Lou
• Jeremy Piven as head writer Jerry (until episode 24)
• Wallace Langham as writer/head writer Phil
• Linda Doucett as Hank's personal assistant, Darlene (until episode 47)
• Scott Thompson as Hank's personal assistant (from episode 49)
• Megan Gallagher as Larry's second ex-wife Jeannie (episodes 1-13, 53)
• Kathryn Harrold as Larry's first ex-wife Francine (episodes 14-30)
• Deborah May as network executive Melanie Parrish

Crew

Directors and writers of note include Ken Kwapis (The Office (US), Malcolm in the Middle), David Mirkin (The Simpsons, Get A Life), Joe Flaherty (SCTV), Carol Leifer (Seinfeld), comedian Jeff Cesario (Dennis Miller Live), and Adam Resnick (Late Night with David Letterman, Get A Life). Kwapis, who directed the bulk of the first season episodes, was particularly instrumental in determining the style of the program.

List of Episodes

• The Larry Sanders Show Episode List

Trivia

• In the British Channel 4 clip show The Ultimate Sitcom, it was implied that the group of mainly British comedians and comedy writers contributing to the clip show considered The Larry Sanders Show the 5th best sitcom ever, putting it ahead of other sitcoms such as The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Cheers.

International broadcast

The series also screened in Australia on free-to-air television on Network Ten (in a late-night timeslot, and with some censoring of language) and unedited on the Foxtel cable network's Comedy Channel. It also aired in the UK on BBC Two, originally in late-night slots despite calls by fans and critics for a primetime screening. Regular repeats later appeared on UK Satellite television on the channel Paramount Comedy 1. It returned to (digital) terrestrial TV in the UK on ITV4 in October 2005, and again in April 2007. It is currently being repeated on the Irish television network RTÉ Two. In Canada, the series was broadcast in late night time slots on the CBC.

DVD releases

• The Larry Sanders Show - The Entire First Season was released on February 26, 2002 by Sony Pictures. While appearing on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which aired May 24, 2006, Shandling announced that the second season would be available Fall 2006. It has yet to appear and no updates on its status have been announced.

• The Larry Sanders Show: The Best Episodes was released by Sony Pictures UK in 2000. It is a compilation containing the following episodes: #302, "Montana" (Robin Williams); #403, "Hank's Sex Tape" (Henry Winkler, Norm MacDonald); #408, "Larry's Big Idea" (Courteney Cox, David Letterman); #412, "I Was a Teenage Lesbian" (Brett Butler). Also included are two first season episodes ("The Guest Host," "The Talk Show"), as well as the second season episode, "The List" (#203) which was left out of the US cable syndication package offered to Bravo. However, it is available to local affiliates.

• A DVD set drawn from all six seasons titled Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show is to be released by Sony Pictures on April 17, 2007.^[1] The 4-disc DVD set features 23 episodes and features 8 hours of bonus material. Shandling re-visits the show's cast and guest stars including Jerry Seinfeld, Alec Baldwin, Sharon Stone, David Duchovny, Carol Burnett, Jon Stewart, Ellen Degeneres, Jeremy Piven, Sarah Silverman, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Greg Kinnear, and Tom Petty. Sony has offered no explanation as to why boxed sets for each season aren't being released separately. Speculation about why this has occurred abounds on fansites; the most likely explanation is that the release was ensnared in legal difficulties.

Books

• Confessions of a Late-night Talk-show Host: The Autobiography of Larry Sanders (ISBN 067102910X) was written by Garry Shandling in-character as Larry Sanders. It was released October 4, 1999. The book was the topic of season five's episode ten, which was also under the same title.

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