HBO’s 90-Episode Masterpiece Was Officially The Start Of A New Era For Sitcoms

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Published Sep 9, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT

Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel.

HBO's 90-episode sitcom that premiered in 1992 was the beginning of a new era of sitcoms that we are still basking in. HBO changed everything. It might be trite to say, but it really is more than just television. Either because of its standards, its early start, or some other magic of premium television, HBO's history is the history of prestige television.

Well before even The Sopranos in 1999, HBO was changing the TV landscape. Though it's probably best known for its drama series, the majority of its early shows were comedies. The Kids in the Hall, 1st & Ten, and Dream On are not necessarily the most memorable original shows the network has ever had, but they had their place.

It wasn't until 1992 that HBO had its first game-changing series, The Larry Sanders Show, a sitcom that began a new era of TV comedies. The Larry Sanders Show was created by Gary Shandling and Dennis Klein. Shandling, who has a cult-like following among comedy nerds, stand-ups, and creatives, stars as the titular Larry Sanders.

The series ran for six seasons and is a workplace sitcom that takes place on the set of the eponymous late-night TV show. Larry and his crew deal with the difficulties of running a hectic TV show, handling self-important celebrities (often playing themselves), and managing their own messed-up lives.

It's one of the funniest TV shows you haven't seen, and despite premiering in the early 1990s, it feels exceedingly modern. It's surprisingly influential, and it's not going too far to say that The Larry Sanders Show paved the way for a completely new era of sitcom storytelling.

The Larry Sanders Show Changed Sitcoms Forever

Jeffrey Tambor talking to Larry Sanders (Garry Shandling) on The Larry Sanders Show.

The Larry Sanders Show introduced a new kind of sitcom, one a little meaner and smarter than those that came before it. Seinfeld came close in that respect, and that network sitcom is still the ranking comedy series over The Larry Sanders Show, but you can feel the HBO series in more modern shows.

It broke a lot of the conventions audiences had come to expect from standard network sitcoms. The series mixes reality and fiction in a way that was never really done before. The presence of real-life celebrities playing absurd versions of themselves is a conceit shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Life's Too Short have been dining out on for years.

The show didn't look like traditional sitcoms. It combined videotape and film to make for a uniquely shot series that had a behind-the-scenes, documentary quality. Celebrity culture and the behind-the-scenes aspects of the series can be seen all over 30 Rock, Extras, and The Office.

HBO Never Looked Back After The Larry Sanders Show

Tony (James Gandolfini), Carmela (Edie Falco), and A.J. (Robert Iler) sit at a diner table in The Sopranos, Made in America.

After The Larry Sanders Show, HBO moved into an era that it has yet to come out of, one dominated by hit show after hit show. The only easy comparison is Pixar from 1995 up until about 2010, when it seemed that they couldn't make a bad movie if they tried. If there's a new show on HBO, more often than not, it's going to be something special.

Within five years of The Larry Sanders Show ending, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Wire all premiered. That comedy sitcom signaled that HBO was a premium channel with shows that you couldn't afford to miss even an episode of.