It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Admirable film.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Jeffrey Tambor played the sidekick to a fictional Larry Sanders in this take on late night television talk shows. Inspired by the Letterman/Leno controversy in the early nineties and the Arsenio Hall show hit, this series is done without a laugh track and features numerous notable guest stars like Dana Delaney, Peter Falk, Mimi Rogers, David Spade, Kathy Kinney, and others before they were famous. Garry Shandling knew how to poke fun at himself and show business and life in Los Angeles, California. He is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast like Jeffery Tambor, Jeremy Piven, and the unforgettable Rip Torn. His wife is played by Megan Gallagher and the booking manager is played by Jeaneane Garofalo at the peak of her success. The series was first shown on HBO which allowed use of unsuitable language. Twenty four years later on DVD, I can't believe that I missed out on it back then. I didn't have HBO and the Larry Sanders Show was getting noticed by critics and fans alike. At best, it is a witty and funny show about the late night television wars.

TLSS is easily the best U.S. sit-com, if one can call it that, of all time. Only "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" come close. TLSS has everything that garbage like "Friends" and "The Bill Cosby Show" haven't got: subtle humour, rich characterization, intelligent story-lines, great laughs, an almost perfect cast, and unlike those two miserable sit-coms TLSS does not cater to the worst/dumbest demographic viewing groups, hence its lack of broad appeal to the masses of morons who seek banana-peel humour when they switch on their TVs.And very importantly: no laugh track.At the core of the series are Larry, Arty, and Hank. Larry is insecure, talented, self-obsessed, and paranoid. Arty is tough, no-nonsense, determined, direct, and full of energy. Hank is slimy, egotistical, arrogant, sycophantic, talent-free, and generally quite pathetic. All three actors playing these three people are brilliant, in totally different ways, but if I had to pick one character that is the most fun to watch it would have to be Hank, of course. After all, pathetic characters in comedy shows usually get most of the glory. As far as comic timing goes, Shandling's is as perfect as anyone I've seen anywhere. The side-characters are very good, too, even the otherwise annoying Garofalo is watchable.The many guest stars only make the series more interesting, especially since there was very little effort to glorify these morons; quite to the contrary, many of them agreed to make themselves look foolish for the good of the show. Most of them pull it off well. Dana Carvey is perhaps the most successful in adding quality to the already flawless cast, whereas someone like Regis Philbin was embarrassing to watch, even though that particular episode was good.Unfortunately, I have seen only about a third of all the episodes, but from those I would pick out the following as the stand-outs (keeping in mind that I haven't seen a single anything-less-than-very-good episode): "Party", "Hank's Sex Tape", "Next Stop Bottom", and "Hank's New Assistant".

It was the best talk show out there. And there is really nothing more I can say about it. Just watch it people. I've said what I had to.

Good news villagers, rejoice, for The Larry Sanders Show is now syndicated on our local NBC here in Detroit and on Bravo from 10-11 with the replay at 12-1 every night, huzzah. Wait, what is the Larry Sanders show you ask? Well, I shall tell you.The Larry Sanders Show is a show about the production of the most generic late night talk show possible, if you're wondering why a lot of people are saying the show is brilliant but the "show within a show" portions suck, that's what they're intended to do. The show exposes how pre-fab and bad talk shows really are, and makes us feel bad for ever tuning into one. It's a form of satire that made me appreciate That's My Bush and it's knocks on sitcoms.The characters are what make this special, even though a lot of the supporting players changed over the years. Larry is neurotic and unstable and is, as one episode put it, "out of the loop", he always seems to get everything last. Hank is Larry's TV sidekick who greatly overestimates his own worth and constantly makes a fool out of himself, it's hard to decide whether to feel sorry for him or to laugh at what a fool he is, Tambor plays his role absolutely perfectly and it's always funny to hear one of the celebrities screw up his name or to hear his laments about his position on the show. Artie, the producer, is a two faced jerk who you can't help but love, he spews profanities and insults out of one side of his mouth and sucks up incessantly out of the other.Real celebrities appear on this show and the "show within a show" portions are shot on film, as to provide for more realism. Oh, and if you ever wondered what the celebrities and the host talk about when they cut away for commercial break but still appear to be babbling away, this show lets you in on a bit of that with some rather hilarious conversation.The show is not only excellent satire, it's well acted and incredibly funny. My favorite episode is Hank's Contract which is the funniest episode centered on Hank and what respect the rest of the cast and crew hold him in.The profanities are edited out of the Bravo version with audio deletion in lieu of bleeps, which i was very very very disappointed about. I don't live and die around cuss words, but it totally destroys a character like Artie's diction, this show, however, would still be better than 99.9% of what's currently on TV if it had half it's dialogue deleted.