A new-fashioned comedy variety show

Not everyone who does a podcast is ready for prime time but, in the case of Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, they’re not only ready, they deserve an actual prime-time slot on HBO and immediate extension beyond the four episodes you get to see starting Friday, Feb. 2.

Williams, of “The Daily Show,” and Robinson, of “Broad City,” have been hosting a hugely popular podcast called “2 Dope Queens” for two

years now. They also make great hosts of what can be best described as a comedy variety show. If there were also live performances by singers, a few jugglers and Topo Gigio, “2 Dope Queens” could be an old-fashioned variety show. Instead, you get the hosts, some big-name guests and some excellent stand-up acts.

Regardless of format, there is nothing oldfashioned about the show, from the back and forth on politics, sex, race, more politics, male sense of entitlement, to passing a tray of food into the audience at Brooklyn’s King Theater when Sarah Jessica Parker shows up to repair Robinson’s shoe and they wheel out a cart full of brunch a la “Sex and the City.”

The big-name guests also include Jon Stewart, Tituss Burgess and Uzo Aduba. I saw only the episodes with Stewart and Parker, but they were more than enough to make me hungry for more, even if I wasn’t in the first row to snag a cupcake from Costco.

The show is also valuable as a showcase for other comics, usually up-and-coming comics, such as Rhea Butcher, Michelle Buteau, Jackie Kashian, Sheng Wang and the amazing Aparna Nancherla. Another great comic, Tig Notaro, directs the show, which has to be a challenge, given how mobile and unpredictable it is. But Notaro captures the immediacy of actually being there — to the point that you’ll say, OMG I would kill to have been there. At the same time, she brings the cameras in close for a balancing feel of intimacy, as if you’re in a hole-in-the-wall club and not a cavernous former movie palace.

Then again, a palace is just where two dope queens belong, and “2 Dope Queens” belongs on your watch list.

Mindy Tucker / HBO Jessica Williams (left) and Phoebe Robinson star in “2 Dope Queens,” based on their podcast of the same name and featuring such guest stars as Jon Stewart and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Mindy Tucker / HBO Jessica Williams (left) and Phoebe Robinson bring their podcast, “2 Dope Queens,” to HBO. The series is also a showcase for other up-and-coming comedians.