In case you hadn’t heard, Hulu — the network-owned streaming service desperately trying to keep up with the king of streaming, Netflix — recently plopped down as much as $180 million for the rights to every episode of legendary ’90s sitcom Seinfeld — “That’s gold, Jerry, Gold!”
And while we knew the series would land on the platform sometime this summer, Hulu today announced a launch date for everybody’s favorite show about nothing, set to premiere June 24. The entire nine seasons of the iconic television show, which ran from 1989 to 1998 before it left at the height of its popularity, will be available on the platform, marking a first for the series.
Created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the show was lauded as one of the best comedy series of all time, thanks in part to a unique premise that changed the mold of sitcoms forever – it was truly a show about nothing. OK, not nothing, really, but more like the mundane. Straying far from the traditional network fare of the era, the show carved out a premise based around a comedian and his friends pouring over the “excruciating minutia” of everyday life in the meta style, before meta was chic.
The cast, including Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as Elaine Benes, Jason Alexander as George Costanza, and Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer grab lunch at Monk’s coffee shop, fight daily annoyances (how dare he double dip?) and date frequently – often with quite memorable characters. We were introduced to characters who were given names that have remained part of daily vernacular thanks to the show — like the low talker, man hands, and, of course, who can forget Elaine’s face-painting love interest Puddy, and his 8-ball jacket? All of this made Seinfeld a monster when it was on the air, and then again in syndication on cable networks like TBS, and once more on DVD.
However, throughout the rise of streaming video, Seinfeld has been particularly hard to track down online. Crackle, which hosts Jerry Seinfeld’s latest endeavor Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, has been one of the few legal sites to host the show, offering a collection of 10 rotating episodes per month. Other than that, users have had to get their Seinfeld fix in random bunches, DVR caches, or torrent sites. Now, finally, there’s a one-stop shop to legally binge all the Seinfeld episodes you can handle (as long as you can take the commercials that come along with it).
Seinfeld lovers, time to reset your Festivus calendars for June 24.