DVD I IT'S GARRY SHANDLING'S SHOW: THE COMPLETE SERIES

IT'S GARRY SHANDLING'S SHOW: THE COMPLETE SERIES

Written by TroyAnderson Sep 28th 2009 Hits: 272 Favorites

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THE PLOT THUS FAR

Before the Internet, before reality TV, no one saw what television could be more humorously and with more vision than Garry Shandling. In 1986 Garry Shandling was poised to become a permanent guest host on Johnny Carsons The Tonight Show. Instead, he took a chance on an offer from fledgling cable network Showtime to create his own television series. No questions asked.

A surreal look at the daily life of a young single man who is a comedian, Its Garry Shandlings Show was not a typical sitcom: Shandling would break the fourth wall to include the studio audience and the viewers at home in on the actual making of the show. Experimenting with the sitcom form meant inviting the audience onto the set, playing with the passage of time and generally exploding the genre and making art of the debris.

Teaming up with Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, the two men put on a fourth-grade play every week for four seasons. With a crew of talented young writers (including Tom Gammill, Max Pross, Al Jean, Michael Reiss, David Mirkin, who would go on to write Seinfeld and The Simpsons, and Ed Solomon, who wrote Men In Black), television history was made. Over the years, guest stars (playing themselves) included Tom Petty, Rob Reiner, Vanna White, Red Buttons, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Mull, Gilda Radner (in her last TV performance), Carl Reiner, Chevy Chase, Red Buttons, Jeff Goldblum, Don Cornelius, The Turtles, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and more.

From its unforgettable theme song to its closing credits, Its Garry Shandlings Show was award-winning, mind-bending television for four seasons, and its influence is clearly seen in the best TV comedies through the decades to follow.

WHAT WE THOUGHT

The series has a character named Garry Shandling (played hilariously by Garry Shandling) running a show out of his living room with story lines about his trials and tribulations of living in an apartment complex with somewhat eccentric neighbors always popping in, his TV mom making things difficult for all and sundry, his success or lack of it in personal relationships, and other mundanities that somehow get blown up completely out of proportion.

Running four seasons, the show lasted on HBO via Premium Cable and was successful enough in that network’s infancy to do everything they could with the idea. Unfortunately, it is a one-note idea and today, things are so deconstructed that the problems I always had with the show to being with. Shandling can only do so much and unless you are a fan, this wears thin very, very quickly. It also made shows like Married With Children possible.

The inane, contemporaneous lyrics to the theme to Garry's show, entitled "This is the Theme to Garry's Show", set the stage for a solid TV half hour of meta-shenanigans. The show functioned as a conventional, and even contemporary, sitcom, one whose influence might be blamed for Nora Ephron's milquetoast romantic monstrosities starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Most of the show, however, existed beyond the story. The universe of "It's Garry Shandling's Show" has no fourth wall, so characters, completely self-aware of their role in a conventional sitcom, frequently address the camera and walk freely between artificial sets (and sometimes into the studio audience itself). Way ahead of its time, the show reverberates in reality twisting comic endeavors such as "Mr. Show" in the '90s and Charlie Kaufman scripts of the aughts.

The DVD comes loaded with a ton of featurettes, outtakes and related show momentos through the four season run. Plus, you also get commentaries from the show's creative runners that went on to create some of the biggest sitcoms of the last 25 years. Then, there's the Apatow connections and the Seinfeld connections and the SNL connections. The original Showtime promos are there, as well as the complete run order for all the episodes.

The A/V Quality is also a drastic improvement over recent Shout Factory classic television releases. I've never seen Gilda Radner's final TV role look as amazing as it did when I cracked this set up. The audio is also a lot cleaner than I ever remember it being. Plus, you've got the theme song. I can go on and on about the show all day long, but that doesn't matter. What matters is everyone going out and buying/renting this set. Shandling hardly gets the credit that he should and it's about time that America rediscovers his comedic genius.

RELEASE DATE: 10/20/09