Hey now! TheLarrySandersShow celebrates its 30th anniversary while its legacy just seems to keep growing.
Though Jerry Seinfeld’s web-turned-Netflix-series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee was always intended to be a low-stakes, conversational affair, there is something indispensable about the Season 7 episode featuring Garry Shandling. First, because it was the last big onscreen appearance Shandling would make, as he passed away less than a year later, which makes Shandling’s self-effacing meditations on his career and his fellow comedians’ mortality all the more poignant.
That said, Gary Shandling’s status as the creator-star of a perpetually underrated but groundbreaking show was always kind of by design. After making several well-received appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson throughout the ‘80s, Shandling became a recurring guest host for the show and was even offered his own late-night talk show that would follow Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. However, Shandling chose to do something a little more unusual.
It’s hard to even know where to start in terms of the most influential parts of The Larry Sanders Show, but let’s just begin with the show’s premise. Since The Larry Sanders Show aired, the backstage showbiz comedy has almost become a genre unto itself.
Another regard in which you can see the influence on countless subsequent TV series is the way in which Larry Sanders was shot. It may not have been the first half-hour comedy to refrain from using a laugh track, but the way in which it created its own visual language feels particularly vital. The scenes that take place backstage or in the show’s office all have this very fly-on-the-wall aesthetic that borders on mockumentary.