Rosie O'Donnell chats with Russell Brand on her new talk show, “The Rosie Show,” on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Even after one week, “The Rosie Show” sticks out on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Rosie O’Donnell’s new talk show, her first since 2002, is shown live and offers a mix of standup comedy, music, dance and one-on-one chats with celebrities about menopause creams and breast reduction. Especially compared with the solemn, mostly repurposed fare that clutters the rest of OWN, “The Rosie Show” is colorful and spontaneous: the funny cousin who shows up for a family ceremony late and lets suitcases of clothes, shoes and presents spill out all across the living room floor.

It’s not perfect television, it’s amusing television, and a reminder of why so many other OWN programs, beautifully shot and expertly produced, seem so dull.

O’Donnell isn’t Oprah Winfrey, but she has a friendly rapport with guests like Russell Brand, Wanda Sykes and Roseanne Barr, as well as people in her studio audience, who ask questions that she answers in the style of the old “Carol Burnett Show.” Burnett is not O’Donnell’s only role model. She has often said she wants to re-create the kind of fun, easygoing talk show Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin used to host in the ’60s and ’70s. And like them, O’Donnell is willing to be silly, be it singing with shirtless male dancers or hosting nutty quiz rounds with celebrity guests.

The celebrity interviews are relaxed and often quite intimate. She and Sykes discovered that as little girls, they both fantasized about having children, not with a husband, but as single mothers. “I guess that’s what little lesbians tell themselves,” O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell always makes a lot of Spanx jokes, but even she seemed a little taken aback by the singer Gloria Estefan, who confided that she wears Spanx with a crotch opening and thus doesn’t need to use paper seat covers in public toilets.

There is a redemptive thread to the show as well, perhaps a requirement for all OWN programming. O’Donnell left “The View” in 2007, after only a year as a co-host, in semidisgrace after publicly feuding with Donald Trump and her fellow hosts Barbara Walters and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

That debacle led to a confessional memoir, “Celebrity Detox,” about her struggles with fame and anger, themes that pop up as self-deprecating jokes in her stand-up comedy.

On the premiere last Monday, O’Donnell performed a mock cabaret number with her own lyrics to “The Night Chicago Died.” (“Remember my problems on ‘The View’/ I told Hasselbeck a thing or two.”)

She also discussed rehab with Brand, a former drug addict, and breast cancer with Sykes, who caught hers early and is in full recovery. But serious issues don’t get in the way of what O’Donnell does best: amiable, free-floating conversation that seems unscripted and unpretentious.

“The Rosie Show” is an OWN program that doesn’t ask viewers to look inside themselves; it just entices them to watch.

“The Rosie Show”

When: Mondays at 7 p.m.

Where: OWN