Watch: Accessible Seinfeld

I first became aware of Jerry Seinfeld while on holiday in Australia in 1997. I was browsing through a bookstore when I saw a book called ‘Seinlanguage.‘

Being from a deaf family, the title intrigued me (although the title is where any relationship with the deaf world ends!) so I got my Mum to buy it. I spent the rest of the holiday laughing at the written excerpts from his comedy shows – including his take on everything from exercise to telephone calls.

Unfortunately, the TV series he created and gave his name to, Seinfeld never became as big in the UK as it was in the US. Over there it was CRAZY. Think how big Friends got over here, then triple it. Then triple it again.

The series was scuppered by BBC2 showing it at weird, late night times that meant most people never caught even the one episode they’d have needed to see in order to discover ‘the show about nothing’ (Perhaps if Twitter and Facebook and iPlayer had been around back then, things might have been different). That said, the DVD box sets have gone on to become best sellers.

In recent years, Jerry’s set up a website featuring a video archive of his appearances as a stand-up and on talk shows. Even better, there also exists a wonderful site called Accessible Seinfeld, where all of that content has been made available to watch with captions.

Here’s one video, below. Check out the site for much, much more. Enjoy.

http://accessibleseinfeld.com/player/uRdd

By Charlie Swinbourne, Editor