Curb Your Enthusiasm "Fatwa!", centered around "The Satanic Verses" controversy, in which Ayatollah Khomeini ordered a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is one of the most acclaimed television shows of the 2000s, praised particularly for its writing and the actors' improvisational comedy. The show has enjoyed largely positive critical reception since its debut and a steadily growing, dedicated audience that helped it emerge from its early "cult" status. On Metacritic, the first season of the show scored 80 out of 100 (based on 20 reviews), 93 for season 3 (based on 12 reviews), 88 for season 4 (18 reviews),
The Larry Sanders Show Brett Butler, Ellen DeGeneres, and Drew Carey. Garry Shandling took a slightly different path with the cable network sitcoms "The Larry Sanders Show" and its forerunner "It's Garry Shandling's Show". In "It's Garry Shandling's Show", Shandling makes use of the George Burns technique of directly addressing the audience. He speaks to the studio and home audiences as well as the other actors, often in quick succession. In both shows celebrity guests appear as themselves and Shandling essentially plays himself: a star of a television show and stand-up comedian with a distinctive "comic persona and rhythm". Shandling said, in an interview