The Larry Sanders Show ran on HBO for six seasons from 1992 to 1998, and later in syndication on Bravo, where it was edited for its profanity due to the rules of cable broadcasting. The entire series was available for streaming on Netflix until February 2013. Sony’s streaming service, Crackle, also carried the entire series until two months ago when it lost the content rights to its parent company.
Crackle had internal discussions about bringing the series back following Shandling’s death on Thursday. However, the deal to bring the comedy back to HBO came straight from the creator himself. “We were fulfilling [Shandling’s] wishes to see the show move to HBO,” Sony Pictures Television chairman Steve Mosko informed TheWrap. It is all but confirmed that the show will also appear on HBO’s streaming services HBO GO and HBO Now.
The problems with The Larry Sanders Show‘s syndication were evident before the show had officially ended. According to a 1998 LA Times feature on the series’ demise, Peter Tolan, a writer on the show, said clean versions of every episode were shot for the first two and a half seasons. That stopped when “the actors rebelled against doing two takes of things,” according to Tolan.
For all intents and purposes, The Larry Sanders Show‘s legacy has intensified as the actors and writers from the series have become some of the biggest stars in the industry. Judd Apatow wrote on The Larry Sanders Show and gained his first Primetime Emmy nomination in 1997 for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series on the season five episode “Ellen, Or Isn’t She?” Along with Apatow, Janeane Garofalo, Bon Odenkirk, Jeremy Piven and numerous others appeared on the show before going on to major success.
It seems even in death, Garry Shandling’s legacy will stream on.
