Mr. Show with Bob and David
television series

Mr. Show with Bob and David, also known as Mr. Show, is an American sketch comedy television series starring and hosted by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. It aired on HBO from November 3, 1995, to December 28, 1998.
Cross and Odenkirk introduce most episodes as semi-fictionalized versions of themselves, before transitioning to a mixture of on-stage sketches performed in front of a live audience and pre-taped segments. The show features an ensemble of actors and of alternative comedians as both cast members and writers, including Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Jack Black, Karen Kilgariff, Tom Kenny, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Brian Posehn, Scott Adsit, Jill Talley, Scott Aukerman, Jerry Minor, Jay Johnston, and Dino Stamatopoulos.
It was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards and one Golden Satellite Award. The show is currently available on HBO Max.
Format
Each episode of Mr. Show consists of a series of sketches, at times surreal, each one transitioning to the next by a link in a manner reminiscent of Monty Python's Flying Circus or The State.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mr. Show with Bob and David” is television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Show, David and television, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q257643. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995 and 1998.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mr. Show with Bob and David” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.