It's a challenge coming up with a description for Important Things with Demetri Martin.

Imagine if Monty Python and The Daily Show produced a kid with a Beatles mop-top haircut.

One might worry that such glowing praise puts too much pressure on Martin. But rest assured, he already has taken the pressure completely off himself.

"We have about 300 million people in the (United States)," Martin said recently as he charmed a group of cynical TV critics. "Look, realistically, if I get a third of those people ... "

Pause for significant laughter.

"That's a hundred million people watching this show," Martin continued. "That takes a lot of pressure off because that means 200 million people can hate the show and it really doesn't matter. I can disregard that two-thirds right off the top. So we're going just for the 100 million that are the core of my demo."

Numbers aside, Important Things with Demetri Martin makes its Canadian debut next Wednesday on the Comedy Network. It made its American debut earlier this week.

Martin is a 35-year-old comedian best known for his work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Before that, Martin was a writer for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

"Okay, some stats on me," said Martin, filling in his resume. "I'm 5-foot-11. I dropped out of law school. I have extensive food allergies, seafood, poultry and nuts. It's pretty serious. It could kill me. This is a detail: Thai chicken pizza with shrimp added to it would be the worst thing I could ever eat."

Important Things with Demetri Martin is not topical like The Daily Show, although some of the sensibilities are similar. The way Important Things jumps around structurally kind of brings to mind Monty Python's Flying Circus.

"It's thing-oriented," said Martin, describing his show. "Every episode is based on a thing. So it's not a topical show inasmuch as it covers news, but more that it covers a simple thing like an object or an emotion."

The theme of the first episode is power.

"Man is the most powerful creature on the planet, and we're arrogant," Martin says in the show. "I mean, people own birds. It's like, 'There's a creature with the gift of flight -- I want it. I'm going to put it in my kitchen and make it crap on old information.' "

Martin often uses simple drawings as comedic devices, or to help illustrate his points. It's an innovative part of the show, but Martin has been fascinated with that form of expression for a long time.

"I loved Gary Larson (who created The Far Side cartoons) when I was growing up, so I think there's something in the economy of just lines or words that has a certain elegance to it for my taste in comedy," Martin said. "It kind of led naturally to doing it on stage.

"And when I started to discover standup, Steven Wright was my first and greatest influence, which I think is pretty clear in my work. Steven Wright was one of the great comedians who was really good at just using a few words to get ideas across."

So let's see, we initially described Important Things with Demetri Martin as Monty Python meets The Daily Show. But obviously we should amend that to Monty Python meets The Daily Show meets Conan O'Brien meets The Far Side meets Steven Wright. Yeah, that pretty much covers it.

We're making Demetri Martin sound like quite a super-hero.

"I don't have any super-powers," Martin says in the show. "The closest thing I have is I'm invisible to bartenders."