The Vile, Vile West

STRIKING A CHEERIER NOTE IS HOME MOVIES, A NEW UPN cartoon from the creators of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, with which it shares a nervous visual style (it's called "Squigglevision") and a contrastingly loose, improvisational approach to dialogue. The subject here is (as it is elsewhere in prime-time Toonville) suburbia and its discontents: specifically, a fourth-grade amateur filmmaker, Brendon Small (played by . . . Brendon Small), his divorced, dating-again mother (Paula Poundstone), his soccer coach (a "big fat crappy Irish guy" played by H. Jon Benjamin, Katz's Ben) and the little friends who make up Brendon's company of peewee players, in such camcorder productions as Dark Side of the Law. Here are a couple of things in it (among many) that I found funny: Paula tells a friend that for a night out she's wearing "a shirt that makes a man want to buy me another shirt." Coach McGuirk tells his team that he's watched some professional soccer, and "I tell you there's a major gap between what I saw on television and where we are right now. First of all, you're all 8, and these people were all in their 20s. They were a lot older -- they were a lot better."

Though I cannot speak with authority as to the psychological or sociological meaning of the cavalcade of cartoons now marching like Alexander's army across the plains of prime-time television, it would be pleasant to imagine that John Q. Tubewatcher has finally gotten his fill of the oopses and gotchas, the ohmigods and eeks of American sitcomedy and is ready for something different, something more imaginative, deep and strange. More likely it's because cartoons are a relatively inexpensive way for a small network to make a big impression, and have the potential to appeal to kids even when designed for adults, since kids just naturally assume that anything animated by rights belongs to them. But the fact remains that cartoons are less insulting to mature intelligence than most live-action comedies; they don't have laugh tracks, for one thing. It's assumed you know what's funny.

No problem with Home Movies. I started laughing almost immediately; later on, I was laughing still.

THE JACK BULL | HBO | Premieres Saturday, April 17, 9 p.m.

BLACK TAR HEROIN: The Dark End of the Street| HBO | Various times through April 29

HOME MOVIES | UPN | Premieres Monday, April 26, 8:30 p.m.