I am – Hercules!!


“Lucy, Daughter of the Devil,” which premieres as a series tonight, is wonderful, and hands-down the funniest thing The Cartoon Network has launched since “The Venture Bros.”

Semi-improvised and computer-animated, it’s the brainchild of writer-director Loren Brouchard, who used to work on “Dr. Katz” and “Home Movies” alongside actor-writer H. Jon Benjamin.

Benjamin, who voiced Ben in “Katz” and Coach McGuirk in “Movies,” is typically dry, low-key and hilarious as Satan, who annoys his beguiling twentysomething daughter Lucy (voiced by "Home Movies" vet Melissa Bardin Galsky) by wildly overestimating her dress size.

Lucy, who inherited dad’s horns but looks good in a belly shirt, is cute, bright, friendly and helpful. Her primary contribution to Evil on Earth is via the oversight of Tequila Sally’s, a Satan-financed San Francisco bar and grill franchise which caters to the after-work crowd with tasty but unhealthy cuisine.

Despite her likeable and benign nature, Lucy is stalked by the ruthless and deadly “special fathers,” a trio of clergy apparently dispatched by the Vatican to assassinate the antichrist. The inept, argumentative and easily distracted “fathers” are themselves hugely entertaining characters, if a menace to innocents and bystanders.

Lurking in the series’ periphery is a rising club deejay called DJ Jesus. Occasionally seen with a very funny sycophantic sidekick named Judas, DJ Jesus appears to be the second coming of Christ. Despite this, Lucy hires him to perform during Tequila Sally's Karaoke Tuesdays. Jesus, who sports a robe and tinted sunglasses, has begun incorporating “miracles” into his set in a (highly successful) effort to coax attractive young women into bed.

When Satan discloses his plan to vanquish the New Christ, Lucy quickly the kibosh on the idea; Jesus, it turns out, is the only one who knows how to run the karaoke machine. When Satan begins to win over a crowd with a karaoke version of Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night,” it is Jesus who effortlessly upstages the unholy one. But even Satan cannot begrudge Jesus his superior showmanship.

Is the show for you? If, like all right-thinking Americans, you harbor fond feelings for “Katz” and “Movies,” there’s every chance you’ll love “Lucy.”

12:15 a.m. Earliest Monday. The Cartoon Network.

$23.99!! 52% OFF!! HEY NOW!!

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