That superb comic actor Jeffrey Tambor - best known for his work on The Larry Saunders Show and Arrested Development - is 70 today. He should have won every award going, but instead he's made a habit of getting nominated and losing out time after time - four times for Larry Saunders, twice for Arrested Development. (He did win a Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, but that's hardly an Emmy, is it?)
Tambor's performance as Hank Kingsley, Larry Saunders' dim, fawning, endlessly self-promoting sidekick is his masterpiece, a pitch-perfect portrayal of a desperate man who knows that his career, his happiness and his very life hang by the thinnest of threads: his tiny 'talent' - which consists in little more than saying 'Hey now!' Some of his finest moments (there are many more) are preserved in this compilation... Happy birthday, Jeffrey!
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As I now watch almost no television, I'm hardly one to judge but, at the time, and now, 20 years down the pike, the 89 episodes of The Larry Sanders Show strike me as a high water mark for HBO, and I regret not one jot the small fortune I paid to get my hands on the boxed-set ('yours to own') from America before it became available here.
ReplyDeleteWhat amazes me is that all six 'seasons' come across as a single arc - 'all of a piece' is the phrase I think. How was that possible with more than 40 writers and a dozen directors? I certainly can't answer my own question.
Interesting point Mahlerman - I think it was one of those shows with a 'creator' with the power to drive it through. In this case it was the star himself, Garry Shandling (as co-creator) - which must have helped...
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