I am – Hercules!!

Comedy Central's new “The Sarah Silverman Program” is easily the funniest live-action sitcom on television.

When this fast-moving comedy connects with a gag – which is shockingly often – it connects deftly and with might. It may have been years since I laughed aloud as much at two half-hours of television.

“Program” is agreeably odd, similar in premise to “Seinfeld,” perhaps, but far closer in its profane anarchistic sensibility to “South Park.”

Sarah Silverman plays “Sarah Silverman,” an absurdly selfish and cheerfully jobless narcissist who lives with her waitress sister (“Comeback” co-star Laura Silverman) next door to a pair of mountainous homosexuals (mammothly entertaining heterosexuals Brian Posehn and Steve Agee).

The episode airing tonight apparently is not the pilot with Masi Oka. It’s about Silverman getting hammered on flavorful nighttime cold medicine and driving into a crowded schoolyard. We get to glimpse her slim and alluring bare hinder as she takes a musical pee.

The other Oka-free episode we saw – which I gather will air next Thursday - is even funnier, with Silverman lending shelter to a grateful if dangerously disturbed homeless man (Zach Galifianakis). A hideous “American Werewolf”-style ghost and a queefing malady manifest elements both pivotal and riotously engaging.

The show also boasts surprisingly high production values, with musical numbers, animated sequences and elaborate special effects in the mix. More importantly, whoever directed these episodes (it may have been “Monster House” writer Rob Schrab?) demonstrates extraordinary care with the material, missing no opportunity to maximize the mirth with, to my eyes and ears, expertly framed visuals and superb pacing.

I tell you, “The Sarah Silverman Program” is hilarious and it is art.

But what matters Herc’s opinion?

Time Magazine says:

… I love it … it's got your poo humor. It's got your pushing-PC-boundaries humor. If you don't like that, you're not going to like this show (which is essentially an expansion of the staged bits from Jesus Is Magic). You may not have liked South Park or Borat either …

Entertainment Weekly gives it an “A-minus” and says:

… more or less just a miniaturized version of her 2005 movie Jesus Is Magic — featuring wan plots that serve as carriers for savage cultural observations, tiresome musical numbers, random sketches, and smart-bomb one-liners. (The first episode, for example, concerns a quest for batteries.) But where her movie overstayed its welcome, the quick-shot format of TV works beautifully. The result is haphazard, amoral, ridiculous, wildly offensive...and, you know, totally hilarious. …

TV Guide says:

… Silverman reminds us how quickly the novelty can wear offwhile watching a pixie with a potty mouth. If there's such a thing as feminist frat-boy humor, Silverman has mastered it. Big deal. …

The New Yorker says:

… the meanest sitcom in years — and one of the funniest … The brilliance of the show — the force of its argument that sitcoms turn us into loserish loners — is also its abiding flaw. We admire the purity of Silverman’s scornfulness, but we don’t want to hang out with her the way we did with Mary and Rhoda. Not that she’d let us get that close anyway. …

The San Franciso Chronicle says:

… It's not very often that a TV show bursting with imagination, audacity, rude charm and a relentlessly funny worldview gets on the air, much less appears fully formed. But Sarah Silverman … has delivered an offbeat gem … a brilliantly realized reinvigoration of the sitcom as only Silverman could dream it. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… Silverman's insensitive slacker character and her supporting cast milk big laughs out of mundane situations. … All series need time to discover their strengths and weaknesses, and this is no exception. But the show starts with a foundation of solid character comedy, which bodes well for the future.

Variety says:

… may be the brightest addition to Comedy Central's primetime roster since "South Park." … if the program itself isn't complete magic, then, excluding Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, it's certainly as close as Comedy Central has come to it in a good long time. …

10:30 p.m. Thursday. Comedy Central.

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