How Mike Nesmith Of the Monkees Invented the modern sitcom
From 1986 to 1990 It’s the Gary Shandling Show changed the face of the sitcom: its self-referential breaking of the fourth wall lead the way for Seinfeld and its writers ended up there and on the Simpsons among others. Personal fave? Gilda Radner shining at the audience…
So, we couldn’t have the modern sitcom without Sandling’s show and we couldn’t have Shandling’s show if Mike Nesmith of the Monkees -who had a show called Television Parts on MTV hadn’t made a suggestion to him. As Shandlinling explained to Larry Gaitlen of the New York Post: “He asked me to do a video that required doing stand-up in his imagination, and then lapsing into the story from the stand-up. I did two of those, and within that discovered the way I talk to the camera while life is happening just to my left or right.”
From small things, baby…
