Elvis Costello, left, with Lou Reed, on the show “Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... ”/THEO WARGO

By MELENA RYZIK


Elvis Costello would be a natural on TV - or so people kept telling him. For years he believed it, entertaining meetings with the BBC and others as far back as the late 1980s about developing his own show. But nothing stuck, even after the singer-songwriter filled in as a host of“Late Show”when David Letterman was recovering from shingles in 2003.

Cue Elton John. Mr.John and David Furnish, his partner, are friends of Mr.Costello’s through his wife, the jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall. (The two were married at Mr.John and Mr.Furnish’s English castle in 2003.) So last year, when Mr.Furnish was approached by a Canadian production company about creating a music-oriented program, one singer-songwriter came to mind.

“David and I were sitting in our house in France,”Mr.John said in a phone interview, “and we said, wouldn’t it be great to do a proper, full-length musical show, because we live in a sound-bite culture. Elvis has experience, he’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of music. We’re both completely anorak, as they say in Britain, geeks or nerds, on music. He’s the one.”

The result is “Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ...,” an hourlong show shown on the Sundance Channel. It is a mix of music and talk and music-oriented talk, with Mr.Costello, 54, serving as host and musical director; he also performs for - or with - all his guests.

The show, taped in New York, features singers like Tony Bennett, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright and Smokey Robinson discussing their history and influences at length. (Mr.John was the guest on the premiere episode.)

While artists talking about their work has long been a draw on cable, the appeal of“Spectacle”has much to do with Mr.Costello’s intergenerational coolness.

“We got a lot of people to say yes straightaway because it was Elvis,”said Mr.John, an executive producer along with Mr.Furnish.“If we hadn’t had Elvis, we would not have been able to make this series, without question.”

Still, when Mr.Costello was approached, he wasn’t interested at first.“Well, I could do it,”he recalled thinking.“But shall we?”

He was persuaded in part because there was “no compulsion to talk about the new product, the thing that’s coming out next week,” he said.“And nobody’s saying,‘Wind it up after a couple seconds because we’ve got to get to the recipes.’”

Instead there are more likely to be call-outs to semi-obscure musicians and discussions of the origins of the singer-songwriter.

Each show begins with Mr.Costello performing a song written by or inspired by his guest - “Bordertown” in Mr.John’s case, and Elvis Presley’s“Mystery Train”for Bill Clinton, who will appear in another episode.

Mr.Costello is an eager talker, though on the show he is equally - visibly - adept at listening. He keeps notes on a clipboard like David Frost, and, with a small staff, conducts research - he even visited Mr.Reed’s studio - scouts for video and writes questions.

For Mr.Clinton’s appearance he uncovered other presidential musicians (Thomas Jefferson played the clavichord; John Quincy Adams, the flute), and asked him whether his speechifying was helped by the rhythm he learned as a saxophonist.(“Absolutely.”)

No one seems particularly concerned that the program has a definite baby-boomer slant. Though Sundance executives made suggestions about guests, along the lines of Beyonce, in the end Mr.Costello, Mr.Furnish and Mr.John made most of the invitations themselves.

“Not everybody that plays an instrument is actually that interesting,” Mr.Costello said.

Mr.John added,“I just wanted to make a deeply intelligent set of programs that, in years to come, people can look back on as a historical reference.”

Though Mr.Costello has said that he is tired of pop stardom, he is not giving up live music.“Singing in front of a band is like standing in front of a jet engine,”he said.“I’m not looking for a long-term career in television.”

He added,“I don’t watch television.”Especially when he’s on it:“How horrifying.”