But where’s the punch line?

David Steinberg, the comedian and director, begins a six-part series tonight on TV Land called “Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg.” It’s not a show anyone needs, necessarily, given all the other interview shows. Not that a series devoted solely to comedians’ art and lives -- certain themes emerge, namely that comics tend to dwell on the worst of themselves -- is a bad thing.

His guest tonight is Mike Myers. The interview meanders from Myers’ stage beginnings in Toronto to his first year on “Saturday Night Live,” when he lived in fear of being fired, to the roots of Austin Powers.

Steinberg is a polite, solicitous host -- too polite and solicitous; you suppose he means to conduct a freewheeling conversation with a comedian-colleague, before a rapt theater audience.

Steinberg has good intros, though. “What Beethoven is to the symphony, what Babe Ruth is to baseball, Bob Newhart is to the stammer,” is how he introduces an upcoming sit-down with Newhart.

“Like most of the truly gifted, he will probably have nothing too good to say about himself,” Steinberg says, bringing Larry David onstage. That episode, airing Dec. 21, is the best of the three TV Land sent out to critics, in that David normally doesn’t give TV interviews and here seems animated and willing (getting him for the sit-down no doubt had something to do with the fact that Steinberg directs episodes of David’s HBO series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”).

It’s indicative of the kinds of interviews Steinberg conducts that he never asks David about returning for another season of “Curb,” just as he doesn’t ask Myers what happened to that feature he was going to do based on his “SNL” character Dieter.

In the interim you get loose anecdotes. David talks about being a cab driver and personal chauffeur after college in New York City. Offering a clue as to what makes the confrontations on “Curb” such an engine of the series, David says: “There’s nothing that strikes me funnier than people calling me the vilest of names.”

*

‘Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg’

Where: TV Land

When: 10 p.m.

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

David Steinberg...Host

Mike Myers...Himself

Executive producers: David Steinberg, Vince Arcaro and Robyn Todd.