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The most popular and influential situation comedy of the 1990s, starring Jerry Seinfeld playing a character named and largely based on himself, set in an apartment block in Manhattan, New York. It featured an electic cast of characters, mainly Jerry's friends and acquaintances - unlike many of the sitcoms of the 1980's that based themselves around family units with quotas of cute but smart-alec children. The show was famously described as "the show about nothing", and the comment is largely accurate, as most of the comedy was based around the largely inconsequential minutae of everyday life, often involving petty rivalries and elaborate schemes to gain the smallest advantage over other individuals.

Many of seinfeld's distinctive traits can be found in subsequent popular sitcoms, most notably Friends.

Among the characters:

• Jerry Seinfeld (played by Jerry Seinfeld) - a reasonably successful standup comedian, who seeks out relationships with attractive women which rarely last more than one episode. A number of episodes involve some obsession of Jerry's that results in offending the romantic interest and breaking the relationship.

• George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander) - a short, balding, neurotic individual domineered by his parents, especially his father.

• Cosmo Kramer (played by Michael Richards) - tall, wild-haired, Kramer is the Seinfeld character with the loosest grip on reality, decorum, or concepts of property.

• Elaine Benes (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) - like Seinfeld, much of Elaine's life revolves around trying to arrange relationships with attractive individuals, although some of hers last rather longer than Jerry's.

A few notable expressions from Seinfeld became popular phrases in everyday speech. Among the most famous:

• yada yada yada - used largely like "etcetera etcetera", although in the original Seinfeld episode it was used to gloss over important details

• not that there's anything wrong with that - used to indicate that while one was not homosexual, one did not particularly disapprove of it

• master of my domain - used to describe one's fortitude in refraining from masturbation.

• spongeworthy - that a potential sexual partner is particularly attractive; in the original episodes, being "spongeworthy" meant Elaine was willing to use one of her limited supply of (no longer produced) contraceptive sponges with this person.