Curb Your Enthusiasm Jewish identification greatly enhances its storytelling capacity, as it lends greater realism and dimension to the characters and opens the show up to episodes with meaningful Jewish themes." The character of Larry on the show is in many ways reminiscent of the "Schlemiel" character often present in traditional Yiddish folklore. The "schlemiel" is usually a comic character whose actions lead to his inevitable downfall, but also stands as a form of resistance to social and cultural values and norms. David Gillota wrote: In 2016, Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" ranked "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as the 19th greatest television series ever
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