Of all the youngish comedians to ascend to near-household-name status in the mid-to-late aughts, Demetri Martin may be the most deserving of a sketch comedy show. It’s not simply that his laugh-per-minute quotient is considerably higher than most of his Comedy Central-tethered peers (including even more high-profile bearers of the stand-up torch such as Sarah Silverman, whose shtick isn’t always about the great guffaw anyway), but also that he approaches humor as a mechanism for conceptual exploration rather than as a vehicle for inherently gut-busting personality in the manner that Paul F. Tompkins or Patton Oswalt do. Martin’s modest delivery wavers between deliciously deadpan and infectiously juvenile, but he manages genuinely funny observations—whether articulated in brief, Steven Wright-inspired jabs or broken down via graphs and charts on the sizable pad that often accompanies him on stage.

Important Things with Demetri Martin, however, proves that a gift for angular one-liners and comedic ideas, along with bona fide variety writing experience (Martin toiled on Conan O’Brien’s late night show for a season) won’t necessarily transcend the dull mediocrity of most cable-based primetime. Martin is likeable and talented enough for one to assume that he just hasn’t yet found a successful way to translate his wooly wordplay and jangly, guitar-assisted punchlines into the structure of 22-minute, three-act programs, but it’s hard to imagine that a stand-up comedian who conceives of such orderly, premeditated specials—Martin has a knack for sensing when bits like surprise guests and goof metrics have outworn their welcome—would have issue with the transition to studio television.