It’s a sitcom staple that’s as old as the genre itself. Television executives, eager to bring in hordes of viewers to the networks signing their paycheck, pull out whatever stops possible to try and bring in lofty TV ratings. One way of doing this, based on conventional wisdom, is creating a sitcom around a familiar personality. Through the years, many successful stand-up comedians have received their own series. There have been plenty of duds, but some of these laughers actually turned out to be smash hits and have endured the test of time through the TV afterlife known as reruns — not to mention lucrative sales of DVD box sets.
