Still anxious after all these years

Is it possible to use the words "genius" and "sitcom" in the same sentence and still keep a straight face? It is if you're Jerry Seinfeld's accountant. The best excuse for the rest of us is "The Larry Sanders Show."

Starring Garry Shandling as television's most anxious talk show host, "The Larry Sanders Show" ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998 . It had all the standard talk-show accoutrements: opening monologue, famous guests, upbeat catchphrases ("No flipping!" "Hey now!"). The talk-show segments got shown on videotape. The backstage stuff -- in the green room, along office corridors, at Larry's house -- got shown on film. It was an elegantly simple visual key to the show's through-the-looking-glass treatment of show biz.

More important to the show's success was its inelegantly complex portrayal of the vanity of human wishes. Not until "The Office" (the BBC version) would a sitcom wring such laughter out of emotional uncomfortableness. "When I saw 'Larry Sanders' I was blown away," says Ricky Gervais , the star and co-creator of the BBC series. "I thought, 'That's how good television can be.' "

Gervais offers this comment in a making-of documentary that's part of "Not Just the Best of 'The Larry Sanders Show,' " a four-DVD box that arrives in stores Tuesday. The compilation includes 23 episodes (there were 89 in all), deleted scenes, commentary tracks, and numerous interviews with cast and guest stars. The complete first season came out on DVD in 2002 , but nothing since. So the new release has been long anticipated.

The compilation is unusual not just for having taken so long but also for some of its bonus material. Shandling interviewed the guest stars: shooting baskets with David Duchovny , boxing with Alec Baldwin , eating breakfast with Sharon Stone at her house. They are, in effect, "Larry Sanders: The Next Generation." Uncomfortableness has gone from atmospheric condition to climate. The interviews take the slightly unnerving emotional tenor of the show and move it several stages further down the road. Unscripted and lightly edited, they feel like outtakes from a John Cassavetes movie.

Not that anything about the show needs updating. In a sense, "Larry Sanders" never really went off HBO. The show's spirit -- restless, knowing, aggressive -- has defined the channel ever since, in drama no less than in comedy. As Jeffrey Bewkes , president of HBO's parent, Time Warner, says in the documentary, " 'The Larry Sanders Show' convinced us, yeah, we can -- if we do it differently, if we do it in a way that has a voice. So from there come 'Sopranos,' 'Sex and the City,' 'Deadwood,' 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' "

"Larry Sanders," you might say then, was the "The Birth of a Nation" of the cable series. That's a compliment big enough to assuage the insecurity of even a Larry. In fairness, he has every reason to feel insecure. Larry's show is his life, and he knows all too well he's never more than one bad ratings book away from being canceled -- or, worse, replaced. The only reason he behaves decently, and he usually does, sort of, is because it's part of his job description: lovable TV host, benign boss, (theoretically) functioning human being.

Shandling, who created the series with Dennis Klein and wrote several episodes, didn't exactly sugarcoat his character. If Larry were any more self-involved, he'd be twins. Yet his considerable personal shortcomings are as nothing compared to those of his second banana. As played with oblivious perfection by Jeffrey Tambor , Hank Kingsley is Ed McMahon as Malvolio , all booming voice and empty grin. He's obtuse, oafish, oleaginously lovable.

In contrast, there's nothing empty about the grin of Artie , the other main supporting character, who's the show's producer. It's the grin of a great white shark, sinking his teeth into the flesh of anyone who dares in any way afflict Larry. Rip Torn, all glorious alpha male strut, revels in the part.

Tambor and Torn set the standard for a remarkable cast. Jeremy Piven , who played a writer on the show for several seasons, says in an interview on the box set that membership in the "Sanders" cast felt like being the seventh or eighth man on the Chicago Bulls bench. Air Shandling? It's not that much of a stretch. The teamwork was of that high a caliber.

The greatest sitcoms have all been group efforts. Confined in both duration and location, the genre always risks becoming a rep company production of "No Exit. " Sitcoms require that actors play well together -- or else they don't play at all. "I Love Lucy" could just as easily been called "...and Ricky and Ethel and Fred. " The titles of her subsequent shows indicate why they were so much less successful. "The Lucy Show " and "Here's Lucy " were about a her, not a them. The interplay among Mary , Rhoda , Lou , Ted , et al. on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" set a standard for ensemble that remains unmatched. And "Seinfeld " with just Jerry wouldn't have lasted a season.

"Larry Sanders" is, in some ways, the anti-"Seinfeld." (Seinfeld, who twice appeared on the show, gets the final celebrity guest visit on the box set, a walk with Shandling in Central Park.) Both shows are about a Jewish comedian playing a Jewish comedian -- only one's in LA, the other New York. Both have a maddening bald sidekick -- Larry's is tall, Jerry's short. One show was cable, the other network. And one has been a blessing for its cast, while the other turned out to be cursed.

"Blessing" may be a bit strong. But part of the "Seinfeld" mystique has been how difficult it's proven for cast members to meet with subsequent success. There is no DVD box for "The Michael Richards Show ." "Larry Sanders" alums have fared notably better.

Tambor earned raves for his dual role on "Arrested Development. " Torn resumed his busy movie career, memorably swaggering his way through everything from "Men in Black" to "Marie Antoinette. " Piven has his own HBO hit, "Entourage. " "24 " has been home to both Penny Johnson (Larry's assistant, Beverly ), playing Dennis Haysbert's wife, and Mary-Lynn Rajskub (assistant booker Mary Lou), as Chloe Martin . Jon Stewart , who Larry feared would take his job, took over "The Daily Show" instead. And Sarah Silverman (who briefly played a writer) and Janeane Garofalo (Paula, the talent booker) have done rather well, too.

The greatest sitcoms have also been about the highly permeable membrane between star and character. Lucy always played a Lucy. Everyone knew that the woman who could turn the world on with her smile wasn't Mary Richards but Mary Tyler Moore. Jerry Seinfeld took an ax to any idea of a characterological fourth wall, naming his character Jerry Seinfeld . Shandling didn't go quite that far, but Garry/Larry have a lot more in common than just the rhyme.

Coincidence or no, all four shows touched on show biz. (Just ask Ron Burgundy if local news in the '70s wasn't a form of entertainment.) Ricky Ricardo was a bandleader. Mary was a TV news producer. Jerry was a stand-up comic. And Larry, well, Larry had more show-biz oomph than the rest of them put together.

Oomph will take a main character only so far, though. What may have been the show's real genius (there's that word again) was recognizing that show biz was a setting and point of departure rather than an end unto itself. "No flipping!," Larry's catchphrase, urged viewers not to change channels during a commercial break. The real meaning, perhaps, was as a pledge that the Larry viewers saw behind the desk would be the same one they got to see backstage. He was just as funny, just as awful, just as human. It's not everyone who can turn the world on with his grimace.

A talk-show host with staying power

Speaking by telephone last month while on vacation in Hawaii, Garry Shandling had several observations to make about "Not Just the Best of 'The Larry Sanders Show,' " the new four-disc compilation drawn from his sitcom, which ran on HBO from 1992-98.

On first realizing he had something special in "The Larry Sanders Show."
I think it was in the "Hey Now" episode. That was the first one we shot, but not the first one we aired, because I thought it was a little too dark. The first time we looked at the film of Larry coming back through the curtain after the [talk] show, walking down the hallway and talking to Artie about the guest, there were two people who actually gasped. "It just feels and looks like something real."

On the idea for the box set and why it took so long.
This started with Steve Moskow , the president of Sony Pictures Television . He had been asking me every year to put out the DVDs after they released the first season [in 2002]. The DVD market wasn't understood then and there was no extra marketing. So it was with his encouragement and enthusiasm that I said maybe this is the time to do it. The "best of" was basically his idea. That sounded right to me. It could let us look back historically and bring it back into the present, which is what those [guest] visits do.

I think the plan is to go season by season after this.

On the visits.
Sony was really egging me on. They said we ought to do some special features, and I said, "Oh brother, what are we going to do?" So I tried this format.

I really wanted to do something that would be different, like the show was different. I think those visits are about reality and life, and I thought it was an attempt at a new way to study the past with a new, very present sensibility. They're intended to be long and real and drawn-out. It allows the time for people to get comfortable enough to be who they are. So you might get one glimpse or more of something you haven't seen before. It's really real and it needs to evolve in real time.

On the basic difference between him and his character on the show.
The sharp distinction between Larry and Garry is I enjoy and get the most satisfaction from the project as a whole. Larry is just about Larry.

On what Larry is up to these days.
He is trying to buy Johnny Carson's house, which is up for sale in Malibu. Larry is definitely trying to do that, yes.

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.