Comedian Colin Quinn Goes Solo

Colin Quinn is not the best salesman for his own show. But then, “The Colin Quinn Show” doesn’t fit neatly into any prime-time category, and it’s only supposed to air for three weeks, a comedy interlude in a long television season.

“What Zucker said to me, I don’t think you get to hear too often,” Quinn said, referring to NBC programming chief Jeff Zucker. “He said, ‘Col, do what you want. We know that this is an experiment. It’s something to try.’ He didn’t even say ‘succeed.’ He said ‘try.’”

That seems to suit the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member just fine. Quinn’s show, to be taped live in New York for broadcast at 9:30 tonight and the next two Mondays, will attempt to effect the loose, topical feel of “Laugh-In,” Quinn said, using formats familiar to viewers (stand-up, sketches, short films) while trying not to be too rigidly formulaic.

He’d rather the sketches play like scenes, like something written by Paddy Chayefsky. And he wants the show to confront the events of the week.

“‘Laugh-In,’ believe it or not, they did deal with the week’s [news] content. They may have done it in an absurd way, but they definitely dealt with the content of the week,” Quinn noted.

That said, Quinn has this lofty way of summing up his show’s worldview: “To me--and I’m not ashamed to say this, [though] I should be--it’s kind of like a meditation on contemporary culture.”

“The Colin Quinn Show” will premiere sandwiched between a 90-minute celebrity edition of “Fear Factor” and the tribute special “Saturday Night Live Remembers John Belushi.” Its three-episode run is part of an overall scheduling strategy at NBC to avoid airing reruns of its dramatic series between now and May.

Quinn isn’t thinking much beyond that plateau, saying the show probably won’t deserve to go further “if I can’t pop this thing in three episodes.”

When Quinn left “SNL” in 2000 (“I was like Ricky Martin when he left Menudo,” Quinn said. “Frighteningly like Ricky Martin. I mean that with all the implications”), he returned to performing stand-up comedy almost nightly and worked on screenplays.

Much of Quinn’s own work is a reflection of his middle-class Irish upbringing in Brooklyn. In 1998, his one-man show “Colin Quinn: An Irish Wake,” featuring the voices of his family and neighborhood, made its Broadway premiere, after Quinn performed earlier incarnations of the show in Los Angeles.

“The Colin Quinn Show” is being produced by “SNL” founder Lorne Michaels and getting a hand from a host of other “SNL” staff, including producer Michael Shoemaker and writer-performer Tina Fey. Former “SNL” cast member Cheri Oteri appears on the first episode.

And yet Quinn doesn’t want the show to bear too close a resemblance to the “Saturday Night” franchise. “That’s the whole challenge ... to try to keep it from being too ‘SNL’-y,” he said.

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“The Colin Quinn Show” premieres tonight at 9:30 on NBC.