TV Picks: 'Late Show,' 'My Brother's Bomber,' 'Adam Ruins Everything'

"Late Show with Stephen Colbert" (CBS, late-night weeknights). The Colbert "Late Show" administration has caught a lot of flak, some of it contradictory, since it was sworn in some three weeks ago. (I described its admittedly imperfect premiere as "strong," and, as talk-show first nights go, it was; you can rehearse a thing as much as you like, but until it's on its feet in the world you don't really know what you have, what screws to tighten and which to make looser.) Some of the objections came from those who couldn't separate the thundering ironic shell from the quieter person inside, who found Colbert cooked funnier than Colbert raw; but it's a matter of missing the caterpillar after the butterfly's emerged -- they're the same creature, identical but different. It reminds me a little of the betrayal some Obama supporters felt when he didn't turn out to be the avenging angel they thought they'd elected, either misreading the candidate, who was clearly never that, or forgetting what actually happens in politics.

Merely by taking the job, Colbert has to navigate a lot of changes. An 11:30 p.m. network talk show has different needs -- some more weighty, some more frothy, some merely structural -- than does a basic cable show, or even a 12:30 a.m. network show. He has to establish his new, authentic self while giving the fans enough of what they used to like him for, without seeming to actually be the self-admiring pundit he used to portray; viewers have to learn a new language, learn to locate the new irony, which is somewhat differently seated than the old irony. (See his Donald Trump interview, which some viewers found weak or fawning, but which, to my eye, managed to treat him as a human punchline without offending him outright; and very much in line with all the Trump jokes he's made.) As if to address these concerns, Colbert himself refers, perhaps more often than he needs or ought to, to the fact that he used to play a character on another show.

As for viewers who miss "The Colbert Report," a huge chunk of it is for all intents and purposes set down within his new show's first half-hour, and it's reliably funny. What the host doesn't communicate yet is a sense of the show as a community, rather than as a platform. There is a lot of "I" in his speech and not so much "we," and it can make him seem big-headed in fact rather than just in comedy. But there seems to be an attempt to address this. And already there is nothing on network late-night quite like it: Last Thursday, with the pope in New York, he hosted a panel of well-known fellow Catholics -- journalists Andrew Sullivan and Maria Shriver and comedian Jim Gaffigan -- followed by Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, and the exchanges, about what it means to be a modern American Catholic were thoughtful and witty and sometimes silly and, in a way, daring. A work in progress, sure, but one already worth watching.

"Adam Ruins Everything" (truTV, Tuesdays). The CollegeHumor Web series jumps intact to television, but with higher production values, built-out characters, a bigger cast and a longer running time. Like "Drunk History," another Internet import, it fills the half-hour by presenting what online would be three separate episodes -- and there were only ever four online episodes as far as I can tell -- and tying them together thematically; this series adds a kind of narrative throughline, in which host Adam Conover appears unbidden, like an annoying guardian angel, to "reveal the awful truth about a beloved part of your world" to a horrified Emily Axford and generally to harsh her mellow. The first episode concerns giving, and how you are doing it wrong, with segments on diamond engagement rings (a "tradition" invented by De Beers to move more diamonds), a remake of the first Web episode; Tom's Shoes' sell one/give one policy (clothes donations destroy Third World local business, also there is no Tom); and canned food drives (much of it thrown away, doesn't meet basic nutritional standards, better to give money). Informational sources (sometimes old enough to give pause) are shown onscreen. Experts are produced, like Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall." Conover, who with Emily Heller ("The Future with Emily Heller") also hosts Fresh Out! LA, a standup showcase at the UCB Sunset theater, has a kind of Puckish charm; Axford is a winsome, plucky foil (which is to say, she doesn't finish the episode in a state of existential despair). The show is funny and fast and informative, though (in its own spirit) you shouldn't necessarily take its myth busting as final, but rather as a spur to continue researching on your own. Adam would approve.