The great thing about "Creature Comforts" is the way it celebrates the rich character of the average human voice.
The concept is simple: CBS's new summer comedy puts the voices of ordinary people into the mouths of clay-animated animals. That panda or snail or bird talking to the camera about life is really just Joe or Jane or Junior Blow, recorded by the show's creators. And yet the result of this simple ventriloquism, which you can catch tonight at 8 on Channel 4, is surprisingly flavorful.
Based on the British series, which was based on the Oscar-winning short by Nick Park of "Wallace & Gromit," the show posits the idea that each of us has an animal within. The stop-motion animators, with Park as executive producer, take the tones and words of recorded voices and match them -- often ironically -- to funny creatures. Sometimes, the overall impact is poetic, such as tonight's image of two porcupines talking to the camera: "I'm not really scared of needles," one says, "but she probably is." Other times the effect is more overtly funny -- the image of a dog sniffing another dog's behind, while his voice exalts in the subtleties of the bouquet of a fine wine.
The not-so-great thing about "Creature Comforts" is that a little goes a long way. A half-hour of talking lobsters, caged birds, bulldogs, and fish is about 25 minutes more than we need. The sweetness of the show would be better consumed in smaller doses -- on YouTube, say, or during commercial breaks, as a way to inspire DVR viewers not to fast-forward through ads. The episodes don't have plots; they are only built on vague themes such as doctors, or secrets and lies.
And so each half-hour wanders on a bit, going nowhere special, kind of like a turtle.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.
