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Five Great Meta TV Shows

Putting a bit of meta or postmodern business into your TV show has become a popular practice, but it’s a hard thing to pull off. Get it wrong and it’s unbelievably grating: either a try-hard nudge and wink piece of faux cleverness, or a deluge of references in place of story, jokes or character (cough, FAMILY GUY, cough. FAMILY GUY). Done right, though, it can literally add an extra level of enjoyment. It’s often still a little showy offy and smug, but with the skill and finesse of a genuinely talented creative team, a bit of meta foolery can go a long way. With COMMUNITY season two arriving on DVD next Monday, now’s a good time for rundown of some of the very best meta TV shows…

IT’S GARY SHANDLING’S SHOW (1986-1990)

Before he was Larry Sanders, the great Garry Shandling took a post modern stab at the traditional sitcom in his self-titled Showtime production. Predating the SEINFELD/LOUIE approach, Shandling plays himself as a stand-up comedian (albeit a somewhat less successful one than in reality) who deals with your textbook sitcom issues: non-starting love life, will-they-won’t-they relationships, dumb pals, and wacky kids. However, Shandling doesn’t so much comment on the genre with a nod and a wink as actively discuss, debate and dissect it. Speaking straight to the audience (often literally the studio audience, on whom the cameras often turn), Shandling and company offer a running commentary on the goings on of the show, cast and plot. First aired over 25 years ago, it’s still an incredibly creative and impressive sitcom. It may be remembered as a warm-up to the admittedly superior LARRY SANDERS SHOW, but the earlier series shows plainly just how much creative talent Shandling had. 

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (2003-2006)

As close as we’re likely to get to a live-action THE SIMPSONS, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT’s meta side was only one side of the comedy omniglot. It was a trick they used sparingly, but to great effect. The most reliable source of postmodern humour was the (mostly) unseen narrator, voiced by Ron Howard. Possibly playing himself, Howard took offence when the man behind the voice was insulted, and threw in plugs for Burger King, the show’s real life sponsor. Meta jokes can be weird and unforgiving when a show trusts its audience to understand them (rather than just plaining saying what your reference is, a la FAMILY GUY, latter day SIMPSONS et al). Towards the end of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT’s run, as cancellation seemed inevitable, the show dipped into the meta-well with increased regularity and intensity. This wilfully odd approach reached its apex in “S.O.B.s”, an episode all but explicitly discussing Fox’s lack of faith in the show. Behind only the thinnest of veils, the characters talk about the possibility of moving to another network, and the various campaigns and cheap tricks that could save the Bluth company. It’s an admirable and typical ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT move – a complete refusal to compromise. Fox wanted something a bit more marketable, a bit warmer. They responded with just about the most left field and members-only episode they ever made. 

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997 – 2003)

Joss Wheadon is one of modern media’s rare voices. Like a Tarantino or Larry David, his characters have incredibly distinct and developed mannerisms, modes, and speech patterns. Specifically, they’re sharp, witty, and pop culture literate. Picking up where SCREAM left off, BUFFY is genre fiction filtered through years of other, existing genre fiction. The characters know the tropes and mythology of horror in and out, and are able to use this pop culture knowledge to their advantage. The show reaches its meta zenith in an episode featuring a confrontation between Buffy and the vampire of vampires, Dracula himself. A familiarity with Dracula’s cinematic tricks helps Buffy win the battle; more postmodern still, one of the show’s non-traditional modern vampires claims to have a long standing rivalry with Dracula, arguing that he ruined the existence of the vampire race by letting the world know how to kill them. Which makes sense, really.

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2000 – )

Whenever a show heavily features celebrities playing themselves, there’s always going to be a meta element in there to some extent. Whether or not that set-up is used for pure indulgence or to craft comedy that would be difficult to conceive of otherwise is down to the creative team. Whereas Doug Ellin’s ENTOURAGE has little to say about Hollywood other than “look how great it would be to be rich and famous”, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM paints LA as a petty and ludicrous town, where the most privileged people in the world still find time to moan about parking and having to queue for stuff. Obviously, Doug Ellin is no Larry David, whose ability to create a comedy universe is simply second to none. Playing himself, Larry is a thoughtless, id-driven menace, living in a world where everyone has their own set of social codes, which generally clash with his own. CURB’s post-modern peak came in its sublime seventh season, as Larry orchestrated a fictional SEINFELD reunion, bringing back the cast of the show that made his millions. Aside from daringly commenting on the Michael Richards racism incident, it provided a wormhole inducing piece of postmodernism: the fictional Larry David, playing the fictional George Costanza, who was based on the real Larry David. 

THE SIMPSONS (1989 – )

THE SIMPSONS has done pretty much everything imaginable in its journey from small part in a variety show to (probably) the most famous TV show ever made. It’s a solid part of the TV establishment now, a huge cash cow that more or less guarantees the financial solvency of Fox, regardless of whatever else they want to do. Recent (read the past 12) years of THE SIMPSONS may be heavily criticised for abandoning the incredible joke rates and uncompromising mix of smarts and heart in favour of zaniness and a glut of celebrity cameos, but whatever state it exists in today, there will always be a backlog of 100 or so almost flawless episodes from the show’s established golden age. Towards the end of this streak, THE SIMPSONS writers produced a treatise on making a successful and long-running TV comedy, “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show”, an episode that would be grating if it wasn’t executed with the finesse of peak SIMPSONS, it skewers the fickleness of an entitled and finicky TV audience, the buffoonery of uncreative network execs, and the pressures on the writers themselves, who at this point were working not for a critically loved but cultish TV comedy, but one of the biggest things on the box. It’s meta TV at its very best: accessible for those who don’t obsess over the show and pop culture in general, but with an added level for those who do.

 COMMUNITY Season Two is available on DVD 24th September

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