HBO Comedy Half-Hour: Steve Harvey

Before the daytime television empires and the matching suits, Steve Harvey was a working road comic trying to square his faith with a stage act that leaned heavily on the profane. His entry in the HBO Comedy Half-Hour series captures him operating exactly in that tension. He opens the set with a completely earnest declaration of religious conviction, then immediately leverages it to excuse the material that follows. Recorded live at The Fillmore in San Francisco, the thirty-minute set caught the comedian during a transitional year. He was already a known commodity as the host of Showtime at the Apollo and a regular on Def Comedy Jam, and his ABC sitcom Me and the Boys had just finished its run. He draws heavily on his childhood in Cleveland to build a tight, early blueprint of the swaggering, observational style that would later anchor the Kings of Comedy tour.