Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

asc85 ...and I say that as someone who thought Shandling's earlier show on Showtime, "It's Garry Shandling's Show" was pretty bad. Because this series was on HBO in the 90's rather than on one of the three major networks, I know that not very many people got to see it. I heartily encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to do so. I very rarely laugh out loud watching TV shows, but I did numerous times throughout it's run. Because it was on HBO, the language is R-Rated, so if you're offended by that, I guess you shouldn't see it. But I thought that's what made it so good, because you got stars playing themselves talking in a way that you wouldn't hear them on talk shows or on publicity tours. And Jeffrey Tambor as the insecure sidekick may not have leading man looks, but has superb acting chops instead.

charlie-benjamin Larry Sanders hosts a show named after himself. At the same time, we watch a show about that show, which is also called The Larry Sanders Show. We get to see actors such as Jeff Goldblum playing themselves, and just as the show that we watch parodies the Hollywood film and television industry, so the actors parody themselves, revealing themselves to have the quirks, neuroses, and flaws that make us all human and funny. While all the characters are funny, for me, the funniest character in the show is Hank Kingsley. He worships the ground that Larry walks on, yet carries around a repressed anger and frustration at the levels of sycophancy he can't help but stoop to. He is essentially a nice person, yet can express howlingly incorrect attitudes towards women, with absolutely no insight into why women might be offended, for example when he asks Drew Barrymoore to lift her blouse for the camera. My favourite moment, of all time, was when Hank met the Wutang Clan, and tried to engage them in an urban conversation, but got the "cool" handshakes and lingo all wrong. This was simply one of the funniest comedy moments ever.

johnmckie THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW: A COMPLAINT. There is a series 2 of dismal shows like Hi de Hi, Allo Allo, Cutting It and Footballers Wives available on DVD. This is possibly the finest, wittiest, sharpest comedy series OF ALL TIME. And it got funnier and darker in the later series. So why no series 2, (or should I say season 2) release on DVD. Or seasons 3-6? I know for a fact all my friends (well, all the ones who matter) agree with me. Please rectify. I'm too busy to start a petition. But there must be someone important like Brad Grey or the HBO dudes who can sort this immediately. Failing that, Garry Shandling must have some pull in DVD-land (even after making that alien comedy and the one with Warren Beatty which didn't even reach Britain). Please email IMDb if you agree with me. I bet I'm not the only one who wants more than one series of Sanders on DVD. Thank you.

paul2001sw-1 The Larry Sanders show was the best, nastiest, and funniest comedy program on either side of the Atlantic during the 1990s. Filmed without a laughter track, it features Garry Shandling as TV talk show host Larry Sanders (motto: "No flipping!"), who we follow on and off camera.On camera, the Larry Sanders Show is slick, professional, and vacant, as celebrities appear pretending to be best of friends with Larry and delighted to be on the show when all they're really doing is plugging their latest product and when everyone in the paranoid entertainment industry actively hates everybody else. Exactly like real talk shows, in fact. As a parody, Larry Sanders is extremely subtle, aided by the fact that many A-list celebs from real life appear, showing a surprising willingness to send themselves up (David Duchovny, for example, features in one episode where the main storyline centres on his crush on Larry!). It's bad, but not obviously: you can really imagine it on air (in sharp contrast to Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge, who in real life would never make it even to hospital radio).But the funniest material comes backstage. The leading characters (Larry, his loser sidekick Hank, and his alternately tough-talking and sycophantic producer Artie) are all so horrible, the main joke is basically that everyone continually behaves in a manner both in character, and yet also worse than you could possibly expect. The sheer unpleasantness of these individuals is jaw-dropping... you continually wonder "did he really just say that?" Hank, for example, after his agent has been hospitalised and he hasn't been allowed to visit, comments: "It's so unfair! I mean so much to him!" then immediately starts phoning potential successors. The character of Hank is perhaps the best of all, his role on the show is to appear talentless and genial alongside Larry, a role he fulfills with partial success because he is naturally talentless but not in the least genial! But all the cast (including many regulars) are wonderfully portrayed, Shandling is great but at the end of each brief episode you almost wish you had seen more of the others... in fact this is probably just another sign of the show's strength, instead of wheeling out our favourites each week for a familiar laugh, this show is always looking for fresh ways to make us uncomfortable.In some ways this is a very un-American program (there's not an ounce of sentiment, or a hint of redemption for its characters). In the UK, Peter Kay's "Phoenix Nights" is perhaps the closest thing to a successor. But the Larry Sanders show remains a major loss from the late-night schedules.