3 Aug 2016

The Show about Nothing that changed Everything

From Afternoons, 3:06 pm on 3 August 2016

For a sitcom about nothing, Seinfeld is something of a cultural sensation.

Seinfeld

Seinfeld Photo: wikipedia

The show about four self-centred 30-somethings living their lives in New York became must see TV in the 1990s.

Seinfeldia

Seinfeldia Photo: supplied

The show, featuring Fastidious Jerry, Neurotic George, superficial Elaine and wacky Kramer, started in a very Seinfeld kind of way -  two guys in a Korean Deli talking about nothing decide their banter would make a good TV show. 

Those two guys happen to be Jerry Seinfeld and writer and comic Larry David.

On paper, no one could have predicted the success of a sitcom about the folly of  the four friends living in the Big Apple.

Seinfeld dominated the ratings during a nine-year run and 20 years after the finale, the show is still popular in syndication.

Author and TV critic Jennifer Kesihin Armstrong looks back at how Seinfeld got to air, the impact it had and its continuing appeal in her new book, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything.

She talks to Jesse Mulligan.