Country of origin United States Original network NBC | No. of episodes 22 | |
Original release September 19, 1996 – May 15, 1997 | ||
Season eight of Seinfeld, an American comedy television series created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, began airing on September 19, 1996, and concluded on May 15, 1997, on NBC.
Production
Seinfeld was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment and distributed by Columbia Pictures Television and Columbia TriStar Television (now Sony Pictures Television) and aired on NBC in the US. The executive producers were Jerry Seinfeld, George Shapiro, and Howard West with Tom Gammill and Max Pross as supervising producers. Bruce Kirschbaum was the executive consultant. This season was directed by Andy Ackerman.
The series was set predominantly in an apartment block on New York City's Upper West Side; however, the eighth season was shot and mostly filmed in CBS Studio Center in Studio City, California. The show features Jerry Seinfeld as himself, and a host of Jerry's friends and acquaintances, which include George Costanza, Elaine Benes, and Cosmo Kramer, portrayed by Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards, respectively.
The departure of Larry David from the production and writing team led to Seinfeld himself taking almost complete creative control of the show. As a result, the show began to remove itself from the 'show about nothing' format it had begun life as, and took a far more absurdist, surreal stylistic turn. Regardless of the change, the show still stood at the top of the ratings for the entire season. It is also notable as being the first season where Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up routines are not present. Seinfeld cites that this is due to him being too busy writing episodes to create additional stand-up material.
Due to Julia Louis-Dreyfus's off-screen pregnancy, her character had to spend the latter half of this season hiding her belly behind furniture and laundry baskets.