Mr. Show with Bob and David

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross met while working on The Ben Stiller Show (Odenkirk as an actor, Cross as a writer) and developed a shared comedic sensibility, testing sketch ideas that hadn't been used on that show at a local comedy club.

After their comedy club routines proved successful, Odenkirk's manager Bernie Brillstein helped pitch the material as a TV show, and HBO, which had already been scouting the pair due to their work on influential comedies like The Larry Sanders Show, quickly greenlit a two-episode order.

The creative team managed to stretch the budget originally allocated for a two-episode order to produce four episodes for the show's first season.

Ahead of its fourth season, HBO moved the show to a Monday midnight timeslot, which made it hard for viewers to find and led to poor ratings, ultimately resulting in the show's cancellation after that season.

Every episode's closing credits included a random celebrity listed in a 'Special Thanks' section as a running joke, with examples including radio host Rick Dees in the first episode and baseball player Greg Maddux in the third.

Episode titles were mostly quotes drawn directly from lines or on-screen text within the episode, such as 'Bush Is a Pussy,' which appeared on a character's T-shirt.

The Blink-182 song 'Adam's Song' was named as a tribute to a Mr. Show sketch about a band writing a song with a similar title and lyrical content; David Cross confirmed in an interview that the band members were fans of the show and made a knowing reference.

A 2008 reunion attempt between Odenkirk and Cross resulted in the HBO pilot David's Situation, shot on the Everybody Loves Raymond soundstage with a $400,000 budget, but it was never aired after the duo felt the final edit failed to capture the on-set energy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, most of the show's cast reunited for a Zoom-based charity special called the Mr. Show Zoomtacular Annual Business Call for Charity, which ended with a cover of 'Weird Al' Yankovic's 'Eat It' performed by the cast and Yankovic himself, parodying an earlier celebrity cover of 'Imagine.'

Mr. Show spawned the spin-off film Run Ronnie Run, which premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival but was released straight-to-DVD; Odenkirk later criticized director Troy Miller for freezing them out of creative decisions on the film.