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Gary Shandling: 2 for 2. Two TV shows, two masterpieces. But where more people are familiar with his later Larry Sanders Show, It’s Gary Shandling’s Show has not received the same posthumous praise or attention, partly because it was a Showtime show in the mid to late 80’s, and then began playing on the just-starting Fox network. The show aired for four seasons, and then was out. And to be fair, it ran out of steam, but when it was on, it was one of the most dazzling formalist TV shows to ever air. My review after the jump.

The premise is that Gary Shandling plays himself, and has a platonic female best friend in Nancy (Molly Cheek) and a married best friend in Pete Schumacher (Michael Tucci). Pete’s wife Jackie (Bernadette Birket) eventually gives birth to a second child, who gets named by the audience, and they have...

Gary Shandling: 2 for 2. Two TV shows, two masterpieces. But where more people are familiar with his later Larry Sanders Show, It’s Gary Shandling’s Show has not received the same posthumous praise or attention, partly because it was a Showtime show in the mid to late 80’s, and then began playing on the just-starting Fox network. The show aired for four seasons, and then was out. And to be fair, it ran out of steam, but when it was on, it was one of the most dazzling formalist TV shows to ever air. My review after the jump.

The premise is that Gary Shandling plays himself, and has a platonic female best friend in Nancy (Molly Cheek) and a married best friend in Pete Schumacher (Michael Tucci). Pete’s wife Jackie (Bernadette Birket) eventually gives birth to a second child, who gets named by the audience, and they have...

Chicago – A lot of classic TV comedies are often pointed to as being “ahead of their time”. The quirky, weird, and memorable “It’s Garry Shandling Show” wasn’t really ahead of its time because there’s nothing quite like it on the air. The groundbreaking cult classic is now available in a gorgeous 16-disc set from Shout Factory and it’s just what Shandling fans deserve.

DVD Rating: 4.5/5.0

Between his stint as the heir apparent to Johnny Carson (Shandling guest hosted “The Tonight Show” an incredible number of times) and the pioneering television he would do on one of the best sitcoms of all time, “The Larry Sanders Show,” there was “It’s Garry Shandling Show,” which ran for 72 episodes from 1986 to 1990. The program was the first ever broadcast on Showtime and would later be rerun and more widely seen on Fox.

Showtime had given Shandling and his co-writer...

TNT has picked up drama pilot Truth in Advertising to series. The cable network has ordered 13 episode of the project starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh and executive produced by The Closer's Greer Shephard and Michael M. Robin.

Monica Potter, Griffin Dunne, Sarah Clarke, Mike Damus and Geoffrey Arend co-star in the series, which centers on two highly creative ad executives (McCormack, Cavanagh) whose professional partnership and friendship are put to the test when one is named creative director of their firm.

The Warner Horizon Television-produced Truth will premiere in 2009. Shephard and Robin are exec producing with Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny. Truth is the third of TNT's four 2007 drama pilots to be picked up to series, following the orders for Raising the Bar and Leverage. The fourth, The Family Man, is not going forward.

TNT has picked up Steven Bochco's drama pilot Raising the Bar to series.

The cable network has ordered 10 episodes of the legal drama starring Jane Kaczmarek, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Gloria Reuben, which revolves around young lawyers who have been friends since law school but now work on opposing sides.

Created by Bochco and lawyer-writer David Feige, author of the 2006 book Indefensible, the ABC Studios/Bochco Media-produced project co-stars Melissa Sagemiller, Currie Graham, Teddy Sears, J. August Richards and Jonathan Scarfe.

Bochco's son, director Jesse Bochco, helmed the pilot for Bar, which was written by Feige. Steven Bochco is executive producing the series.

"'Raising the Bar' is the sort of smart, highly charged legal drama for which Steven Bochco is known and an ideal fit for our line-up," Turner's top content executive Michael Wright said. "Steven and the exceptional cast and crew he's assembled have put together an excellent drama, and we're proud to add another talent-rich, entertaining series to the TNT schedule."

Raising the Bar is one of four pilots TNT greenlighted last year, along with Leverage, Truth in Advertising and Family Man, which remain in contention for a series pickup.

Tony winner Christian Hoff has come aboard Fox's comedy pilot Hackett. Meanwhile, Annie Potts, Brendan Sexton, Sean O'Bryan and Jennifer Aspen have joined TNT's one-hour pilot Family Man, starring William H. Macy.

Both pilots hail from Sony Pictures TV.

Hackett, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, centers on a bad-boy literary luminary (Donal Logue) who escapes his disgraced career teaching at Yale only to find himself among the ultra-PC ranks of teachers at an Ohio public high school.

Hoff will play the school's vice principal, a frustrated wannabe writer and Hackett's nemesis. The actor, who won a Tony this year for his work on Jersey Boys, is repped by Stone Manners Agency and managers Cirrincione & Associates.

Family Man, a co-production with Craig Zadan and Neil Meron's Storyline Entertainment, is a light drama starring Macy as unlikely criminal John Parker: a respected father and pillar of his community by day and the leader of a bickering gang of burglars by night.

Potts will play his wife.