By Lynn Elber
The Associated Press

BURBANK, Calif. - Tom Green walks out on stage to greet the audience for his new MTV talk show, pulling gamely at the dress shirt spilling out of his pinstriped trousers.

Tom Green

The comedian, known for his crass antics on television and in movies, is making more than a style point with the designer suit. He's all dressed up with somewhere to go: in a different career direction.

Shock value is out and bonding with guests and his audience is in, Green said Friday after wrapping his first week of The New Tom Green Show (airing 12 a.m. EDT on MTV).

"When you do an hour a night, it's not comfortable to watch someone come out and (play with) a dead moose for an hour a night. As much as I'd enjoy watching that," he said, dryly, "not everybody else in the world would."

That approach helped draw attention to the Canadian-born Green's fledgling U.S. career when he started The Tom Green Show on MTV in 1999.

"It did become a little frustrating at certain points with the half-hour show, because once you've done that shock thing a couple of times you cannot keep topping it," Green said. "We had other stuff we wanted to do."

He returned to television, which he calls his first love, after a film career that included moderate highs (he had a cameo in the first Charlie's Angels, which starred future ex-wife Drew Barrymore) and a maximum low (2001's Freddy Got Fingered).

A more subdued Green

A tinge of gross-out humor remains, but in his first few outings Green has emerged as both an affable host with an easy command of talk-show mechanics and a comic with an original sense of whimsy.

One night, explaining the ratings growth he would like for the show, Green placed cages containing successively larger gerbils on his desk. In a filmed bit, he visited the Tom Green County library in Texas to lobby for a card, insisting the facility was named for him.

"He seems a lot more relaxed, not so over-the-top," audience member Bronwyn Keith said. "This might be a good form for him."

A review in The New York Post was more definite, calling Green "a creative talent and natural broadcaster in the tradition of the young David Letterman." ("I have it framed," Green joked.)

Deliberately, much of The New Tom Green Show is traditional. In the style of Johnny Carson, Green encouraged a monkey to scramble over him as he conducted an interview with skateboarding champion Tony Hawk. Even the 1960s-style set evokes The Tonight Show.

Green prepared for the job by going back to the genre's roots and analyzing the work of Tonight hosts Carson, Jack Paar and Steve Allen. He's also a longtime admirer of Letterman.

"I found a real excitement about Jack Paar," Green said. "He wasn't necessarily the most physical or the silliest of them all, but he had this sort of honesty to him, maybe a more brutal honesty than any of the others. He would open up his personal life and about things that happened during the day."

Green, who previously shared his fight against testicular cancer on MTV, said he's eager to build the same rapport with viewers. He plans to leave monologues about politics and pop culture to others.

"What we're trying to do, and hoping to accomplish once we get in the right groove, is to make it feel real casual ... letting people get to know the characters on the show and feel they're in a little world," Green said. "I want to be as honest as I can be and I want people to feel they're seeing something real when they tune in."

Still goofy, but not mean

Those populating The New Tom Green Show include Glenn Humplik, a friend who worked with Green on his old MTV show, and piano player Ed Scott, an 83-year-old TV veteran who wrote music in the 1960s for The Garry Moore Show. (Until he was hired, Scott admits, he'd never heard of Green.)

Green's grown-up wardrobe - the once-casual dresser is wearing clothes from Hugo Boss and Dolce & Gabbana - is a "respect thing for the guest," he said.

MTV has ordered six weeks' worth of shows and is pleased with the ratings so far, said John Miller, the channel's vice president of development.

The show is part of the pack of late-night shows that start after Letterman and Jay Leno, including Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Kilborn. (Orlando Jones' new show on FX airs earlier, at 11 p.m. EDT.)

Will a more sophisticated Green, 31, be in tune with MTV's young audience?

"I think that 'sophisticated' is probably going a bit too far," gently corrects Miller. "I think this is a more mature version of Tom." He's got less of a mean streak but he's "still goofy, still into taking risks," the executive said.

The hostility that sometimes pervaded Green's comedy was absent from his debut shows, and the comedian concedes he took pains to reassure potential guests they had no reason to be wary.

"The idea certainly is not to have people come on the show and hoodwink them and make fun of them, or anything like that," Green said. "I have a lot of opportunities to make fun of my friends and my parents on the show. I don't have to make fun of other people."