It's Garry Shandling's Show was the beginning of comedian and sometime 1980s Tonight Show guest host Garry Shandling's ongoing exploration of lives led in front of the camera, while parodying the world of television; his magnum opus, the fruits of these years, is The Larry Sanders Show.

Shandling, with former Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, created It's Garry Shandling's Show, which was on Showtime from 1986 to 1988, and Fox from 1988 to 1990. The gimmick of the show was inspired by a device that hadn't often been used since the 1958 end of Burns and Allen's run: breaking the fourth wall. Shandling played himself, a neurotic comedian, and regularly talked to the camera, making observations, updating the plot, or interjecting a joke. The difference was that everyone else in the cast knew they were on television...