Prowling the stage with a feline gait, Jeselnik, in a leather jacket and jeans, never breaks character: a preposterously confident jerk with the cool indifference of a sociopath. His attitude veers from contempt to condescension as he tells macabre jokes delighting in death, dropped babies and casual murder. If we are living in such a sensitive and politically correct age, as comics often remind us, how does he get away with this?

“Comedy is under a microscope today, but because my career has been going on long enough, I’ve been grandfathered in,” Jeselnik, 40, told me. “Not to put myself on that level, but I’m the new Don Rickles. Rickles could get away with things because he’s Rickles.”

His reputation does precede him, but in three hours of conversation, he came across not as an insult comic or reckless taboo-buster, but as a thoughtful, progressive-minded artist whose pinpoint provocations are the result of careful consideration and clever sleight of hand.

Over the past 16 years, his slow delivery has become comically deliberate, and his act more stylized and self-aware, with a running commentary on his jokes. “That was pretty much the greatest opening joke of all time,” he says after the special’s inaugural punch line.

When I asked him why he had said “pretty much,” Jeselnik responded that he had released three previous specials. In such moments, Jeselnik displays the same swagger offstage as he does on.