Steinberg's 'Sit Down' feels different each week
The host is happy to let his guest do more than just the talking.
By DIANE WERTS
Newsday
"Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg" feels like a different show every week.
This is a good thing.
It means that unlike some other TV interviewers, stand-up turned director turned talk-show host David Steinberg is happy to let his guest do not just the talking but the shaping of each individual hour. Last week's series premiere on cable channel TV Land with unassuming "Austin Powers" creator Mike Myers was a low-key debut in which the two Second City veterans (from different eras, the '60s and the '80s) relaxedly riffed off each other.
Tonight's show with "Seinfeld" creator and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Larry David is a hyper hour in which TV's beloved misanthrope kvetches, self-deprecates and justifies himself before a small and responsive audience. The intimacy is appealing, if sometimes aggravating, but that's only because David can be. Steinberg indeed sits back and lets his guest behave however he wants. This is as close as you're likely to get to eavesdropping on a casual comics get-together.
Naturally funny
Which doesn't mean to expect vast insight about being funny. For the most part, these guys just are. They don't get off on explaining it. Steinberg will gently nudge the chat this way or that, asking David for examples from the stand-up routines he says he was bad at, which then become their own body of evidence.
He'll bring up the process of putting together the improvised dialogue of "Curb" from a detailed outline. (Steinberg has directed for the series; the Christmas episode he mentions tonight will repeat Dec. 31 on the digital channel HBO Comedy.)
But when David heads off on a tangent, Steinberg indulges him. An offhand inquiry about acting classes gets David going on about how he evolved the "Curb" improv because acting involved waiting for the other actor to deliver his line, "stopping you from talking, when you wanted to talk." And of course David talks fine.
Next week's chat with Bob Newhart brings in yet another comedy generation, steeped in the "button-down mind" and Las Vegas nightclubs of the 1950s.