It’s Garry Shandling On DVD!

Wonderful news, even better that the whole show will be coming out as one complete-series set. (It’ll be expensive, but I doubt the whole series would come out if they released only one season.) It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was a variation on an older type of television and radio program, what somebody called the "I Me Mine" format -- a show about somebody starring in a show. In Garry Shandling, done before a live audience, he played himself, and -- like Jack Benny and Burns & Allen and the other old shows that influenced it -- it was both a situation comedy and a show about situation comedy.

The approach of this show (and its template for how to bring a stand-up comedy act into the world of sitcoms) would influence Seinfeld a few years later, but without the fourth-wall-breaking. I think I prefer it to his more famous The Larry Sanders Show, though that deserves to have a complete DVD release too.