TV

Tom Green is back on late-night TV

Tom Green is back — less manic, but still possessing the inquisitive energy that fueled MTV’s popular “The Tom Green Show” during its heyday (1999-2003).

Green, now 41 and a (testicular) cancer survivor, has returned to the land of late-night TV with the hour-long “Tom Green Live,” airing every Thursday (9 p.m.) on AXS TV (formerly HDNet).

And, this time around, Green is going for a more “hip” vibe akin to the late-night milieu pioneered by the late Tom Snyder, most notably on NBC’s “Tomorrow” (and on “The Late Late Show” from 1995-99).

“I remember when he came back to CBS, and that’s when I really discovered him, at an age when I was starting to discover comedy,” Green says of Snyder, who died in 2007 at the age of 71 — and whose unpredictable cheekiness (and dancing eyebrows) were famously lampooned by Dan Aykroyd on “Saturday Night Live.”

“I used to love ‘The Late Late Show,” Green says. “It was nice to be able to be up late at night and see an extended conversation.”

“Tom Green Live,” shot in LA, is particularly reminiscent of Snyder’s “Tomorrow” with its muted lighting, single-guest/no-studio-audience format and asides to (and occasional laughter from) the show’s crew.

“The thing about this show that’s not immediately apparent is that it’s something we built ourselves,” says Green, who’s been hosting a podcast and an Internet talk show from the living room of his house for years (dating back to 2006).

“We built the set in a little studio that we created for the [new] show and moved the studio out of my living room into our production office, so it’s my own studio, which is really exciting for me,” he says. “It gets me back to the days of doing my show in my living room.

“We’re trying to create a tone that’s very relaxed, and part of that comes from the fact that we have only one guest, and from the kinds of questions I’m asking and the research I do,” he says.

(“Tom Green Live” guests have, thus far, included Richard Belzer, Howie Mandel, Tony Hawk and Henry Rollins; Andrew Dice Clay is booked for an upcoming show.)

“When I have a guest here for a full hour, I try to find something fun to sort of surprise them, or they realize that I actually read their book — which creates a sort of bond between me and the guest,” he says. “It’s a very laid back kind of thing — we even have a keg here so you can have a beer before the show.”

And Green says that, while he hasn’t yet met the network’s owner in person — that would be multi-millionaire Internet mogul Mark Cuban — the two have been in touch.

“I’ve gotten a lot of encouragement from him,” he says. “We’ve been e-mailing quite a bit and he’s sent me a lot of encouraging and funny e-mails, basically saying, ‘Go out there and do some great interviews.’

“I’m still finding my rhythm and a lot of improvements are going to be made,” Green says. “We’re live, with no TelePrompTer and nothing is pre-scripted. I write out all my questions the night before.

“But there aren’t a lot of places on TV anymore where you can go [as a guest] and not be directed by the host.”