The Green Room

The Green Room was a talkshow on Showtime hosted by Paul Provenza featuring a panel of comedians discussing comedy. The show was set around a roundtable in front of a live studio audience. No subject was taboo and nothing was censored. Paul Provenza described it as Stand up but not, Talk Show but not. The Green Room didn’t have a script, no topic of the day nor a topic to move on to. The idea for it as Paul described on his Reddit thread was for it to flow wherever it went like Jazz. As he described in an interview on NPR in 2011 they really strived for an authentic feeling of what it’s like when comedians are hanging out amongst themselves. To get comedians to really open up and be free of the need to get a laugh every so-and-so seconds.

Unfortunately after 2 seasons of episodes Showtime they did not order a 3rd season.

All episodes are now available on Paramount +.

One of our favorite episodes (and Paul Provenza’s favorite episode which he confessed on a Reddit thread) was with Patrice O’ Neal, Bob Saget, Roseanne Barr and Sandra Bernhard. If you want to see some of the top comedians genuinely interact with each other, uncensored this is one of the best shows ever made in Comedy history.

Episodes

1 – Drew Carey, Reginald D. Hunter, Eddie Izzard, Larry Miller

2 – Sandra Bernhard, Patrice O’Neal, Roseanne Barr, Bob Saget

3 – Brendon Burns, Andy Dick, Dana Gould, Andy Kindler

3 – Jim Jefferies, Paul Mooney, Rain Pryor, Bobby Slayton

5 – Robert Klein, Rick Overton, Jonathan Winters

6 – Penn Jillette, Martin Mull, Tom Smothers

Season 2

7 – Judd Apatow, Bo Burnham, Marc Maron, Ray Romano, Garry Shandling

8 – Franklyn Ajaye, Dana Gould, Kathy Griffin, Greg Proops

9 – Richard Belzer, Janeane Garofalo, Dave Attell, Doug Stanhope, Glenn Wool

10 – Lewis Black, Ron White, Kathleen Madigan, Jamie Kilstein

11 – Margaret Cho, Richard Lewis, Jeff Ross, Kumail Nanjiani

12 – Tommy Chong, Joe Rogan, Rick Shapiro, Eddie Ifft

13 – Bill Burr, Russell Peters, Colin Quinn, Caroline Rhea, Lizz Winstead

14 – Jimmy Carr, Judah Friedlander, Chris Hardwick, Eddie Izzard, Tim Minchin