Have you ever watched a television show and thought "wow, this seems like something that would happen in real life?" Well, in some cases you might be right! Over the past few decades, there have been many TV shows inspired by the real lives of their stars and/or writers. Some of the funniest examples of this are TV shows based on the real lives of comedians, whose true stories are often even stranger (and funnier) than the ones they make up. Here is a list of some of the best.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Curb Your Enthusiasm is a long-running comedy series starring writer and comedian Larry David. What some people may not know is that this series is actually based on David's real life. The events in the show have been a bit exaggerated, of course, and David would like everyone to know that he is not as mean in real life as his fictional counterpart. "He's my version of Superman," he says when discussing the differences between himself and the character he created, and how he used this character to vent his real-life frustrations with the world and the entertainment business. "The character really is me, but I just couldn’t possibly behave like that... We’re always doing things we don’t want to do, we never say what we really feel, and so this is an idealized version of how I want to be."
30 Rock
Tina Fey both created and starred in this comedy hit, in which she plays Liz Lemon, a writer for a live television show. This is based on her real life as a writer for Saturday Night Live, with many of the things that she saw and did on set being turned into great fodder for this quirky sitcom. Her boss/mentor in the show, played by Alec Baldwin, is based on Lorne Michaels, her former boss at SNL, who helped guide her in the beginning stages of her career.
Seinfeld
We already mentioned Larry David, who was the writer of Seinfeld (and is the person on whom the character of George Costanza is based), but this show is actually based on the life of Jerry Seinfeld himself. He worked in all the people who surrounded him in his real life and incorporated a lot of wacky stories that really happened to him - with the key difference being that in the show he was only a minor celebrity, when in real life he was actually quite famous at the time.
Everybody Hates Chris
Obviously not everybody hated Chris Rock, as he grew up to be a very famous and hilarious comic with his own sitcom. This sitcom, which he narrated, followed a young Chris (played by Tyler James Williams) as he grew up in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Brooklyn, New York. It shows him dealing with his ridiculously cheap father, hot-headed mother and two siblings who never seem to be on the same page as him, as well as with bigger themes like racism and being a part of the working class.
