• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 7, 2024

It took David Letterman 30-plus years to find a TV show on which he actually looks relaxed and comfortable.

On his old late-night shows -- NBC’s “Late Night” and CBS’s “Late Show” -- Letterman’s discomfort, his “edginess” (to apply an overused word), whether real or not, was part of the act, and part of his appeal as a TV personality. 

But since 2018, Letterman, now 77, has found a new rhythm, and seems more at home than at any other point in this long career, with his Netflix talk show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”

A case in point is the newest one, an interview with John Mulaney that premiered April 30. It is the 26th episode of “My Guest Needs No Introduction.”

These days, and for a number of years now, Mulaney, 41, has not needed an introduction. Mulaney’s appearance with Letterman is just another advancement in the comedian’s slow but sure conquest of Netflix. 

For anyone looking for an entry point into the world of John Mulaney, the TV Blog highly recommends his most recent Netflix stand-up special, “Baby J.” 

The principal subject of this brutally hilarious performance is his own experience with drug addiction and recovery. 

On “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” this topic is the first subject that comes up. 

“Did you ever think of John Belushi in your condition?” Letterman asks, referring to the legendary original cast member of “Saturday Night Live” who died of a drug overdose in 1982.

The connection came up because Mulaney was a writer on “SNL” for four seasons.

“Not actively,” Mulaney replied to the Belushi question. “After everything blew up, and I was in my room at rehab, I talked to Lorne Michaels on the phone for like an hour one day.”

In the conversation, Michaels gave Mulaney a piece of perspective on drug addiction and its consequences. 

“I knew John Belushi for seven years,” said Michaels. “I’ve been talking about him for 48 years. That’s the shrapnel that happens when someone goes down like that.”

Although I have watched only a few of the previous 25 episodes of “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” Letterman seems at the height of his powers right now.

If this interview show demonstrates anything, it is that nine years after saying farewell to late-night TV, Letterman still has juice.

To say the guests on his Netflix show have been wide-ranging is an understatement. They have included Barack Obama and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian (separately), Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Jay-Z, Kevin Durant, and the list goes on and on.

Missing from the list is Jay Leno, an interview the TV Blog hopes to see before Letterman retires for the second time.