'Sit Down Comedy': Funny Business

Next week's hour with Larry David is also a great big treat, even though David is coming off probably the worst season in the history of his HBO comedy series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Fortunately, the worst season of that show is still better than the best season of many a standard, played-by-the-rules sitcom. David says that the obsessively disputatious crank he plays on the show is the Larry David he wishes he really were -- and what a scary thought that is.

We happy few who are die-hard, laugh-hard fans of the show -- episodes of which Steinberg has directed -- can dissect it to bits, but David's own explanation of its origins and his character is a model of oddball simplicity: "There's nothing that strikes me funnier than people calling me the vilest of names." It follows, somehow, that when David made his living (just barely) as a quixotic stand-up comic, he loved doing a bit in which he played "a dairy lobbyist," and he liked to begin by asking the audience whether he could address it "in the tu form" rather than the less intimate "you."

Crowd pleasers not. But he kept doing them.

David knew he wasn't cut out for stand-up because "I didn't want to travel . . . I don't like packing." What better reason for a career choice? David doesn't do anything so brash as calling Steinberg a name, but he does complain that he wasn't given dinner as part of the arrangement: "I need a meal. . . . I'm starving!"

A TV Land spokeswoman says there'll be more "Sit Down" sessions next season if the response is good over the next six weeks, and that female stand-ups will be included. Steinberg's status in the comedy world and his ability to call on friends for favors clearly play a part in being able to land such great guests. It wouldn't be fair to say there's never a dull moment, but there are few. Comedians can be funny even when they are not officially comeding; what Steinberg's guests have in common isn't professionalism or a formal skill, but something in the DNA.

They were born to be funny. They can't help it. It's their gift and their curse and our -- dare we say it? Yes, we dare -- blessing.

Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg (60 minutes) premieres tonight at 10 on TV Land.