Mr. Show with Bob and David
Bob Odenkirk and David Cross's HBO sketch show ran four short seasons, each sketch bleeding into the next Monty Python-style, with a cast that included Sarah Silverman, Jack Black and Paul F. Tompkins. Its audience on premium cable was small. Then the DVDs came out.
Mr. Show with Bob and David premiered on HBO on November 3, 1995. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross had met on The Ben Stiller Show, Odenkirk as a performer and Cross as a writer, and started taking the ideas that hadn't worked there to a local comedy club. The sets went well enough that Odenkirk's manager, Bernie Brillstein, went looking for a television home; HBO, already aware of the pair from their work on shows like The Larry Sanders Show, ordered two episodes, and they stretched the money to cover four. Most episodes opened with someone introducing Bob and David, who played semi-fictional versions of themselves, before cutting between sketches performed in front of a live audience and pre-taped pieces.
The structure was the trademark. Every scene linked into the next — a minor character in one piece walked off to become the lead of the following one — in the manner of Monty Python's Flying Circus and The State. Episode titles were lines lifted from the episode itself, and the credits thanked a random celebrity each week, from Rick Dees to Greg Maddux. The ensemble of writers and performers reads now like a roll call of the next twenty years of American comedy: Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Jack Black, Tom Kenny, Jill Talley, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Brian Posehn, Karen Kilgariff, Scott Aukerman, Scott Adsit, Jay Johnston and Dino Stamatopoulos among them. The show earned four Emmy nominations, including two for writing, and won none.
For the fourth season HBO moved it to a Monday midnight slot, where almost no one could find it, and cancelled it after the December 28, 1998 finale — 30 episodes in all. Then it grew. The DVD sets opened the show to an audience it never had on cable; a spin-off film, Run Ronnie Run, played Sundance in 2002 and went straight to video, and a 2002 stage tour, Hooray for America!!!, hit 16 cities. Blink-182 named "Adam's Song" after a Mr. Show sketch. Tim and Eric have said Awesome Show, Great Job! was highly inspired by it, and Odenkirk produced that show; and Portlandia, Key & Peele and Kroll Show have cited it too. Cross went on to Arrested Development, and in 2015 the two reunited on Netflix for W/ Bob & David.
Similar items
The State
MTV's 11-person sketch troupe lasted four seasons and 25 episodes but launched half the comedy you loved in the 2000s. They wrote, acted, directed, and edited everything themselves — and left behind $240 worth of pudding.
Arrested Development
A razor-sharp comedy about a wealthy, deeply dysfunctional real-estate family, canceled after just three seasons on Fox but too clever to fade. Low ratings, massive critical acclaim, and jokes that rewarded rewatching — there was always money in the banana stand. When Netflix revived it, the show's legacy finally caught up to its ambition.
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
A public-access nightmare on Adult Swim: fake commercials for useless Cinco products, amateur actors recruited off Craigslist, John C. Reilly as the dazed newsman Dr. Steve Brule, and editing that made every frame feel slightly broken. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim called it "the nightmare version of television," and from 2007 to 2010 it was either the funniest or the most hated thing on the block.
Eastbound & Down
A profane, darkly funny HBO series about a washed-up baseball pitcher who returns to his hometown with nothing but a mullet and monumental delusions. Created by Danny McBride (who also stars), it turned small-town mediocrity into comedy gold.