HBO's humor is hit and miss

An American spin on the British series from the original's creators, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, "Little Britain USA" delivers a community of characters who exhibit acute symptoms of human nature and then some. The show is certainly crude burlesque, with no shortage of penis and breast jokes along the way; if you don't like comedy that pushes the boundaries of good taste, you have no business here. But the material is presented with enough comic skill, cultural resonance, and clever mockery to rise above. The sketch that finds a cop getting visibly aroused each time he picks up a gun, for example, is infantile and yet savvy; ditto the one in which a little girl spouts nasty phrases she's gleaned from the Internet.

And the woman who gives voice to her dog, and then has her dog make her do unseemly things in public, is a classic caricature of anthropomorphism and dog love. It's kind of sick, kind of extreme, kind of true. In that one sketch, you can see the debt that Lucas and Walliams owe to the broadness of Monty Python, the offbeat freakiness of Kids in the Hall, and the social satire of Tracey Ullman. Still, the bit is uniquely their own.

Lucas and Walliams play all the major male and female characters on "Little Britain USA," some of whom also appear in their British series - notably the officious receptionist whose mantra is "Computer says no." But the theme of the American series is, as hyperbolic narrator Tom Baker tells us, "cross-cultural examination." And so the British characters are in America, among a set of new characters, including a former astronaut desperate for attention for being the eighth man on the moon. There's a gay British prime minister who has the hots for a black American president, and an American couple whose visiting British cousins have a rather quaint mother-son dynamic, all in the name of culture clash.

As on Showtime's "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union," the episodes are presented as a sort of day-in-the-life-of-America, with appealing production values that are nonetheless marred by a laugh track. Much as I admired "Little Britain USA," I was glad to learn that it's only a six-episode series. Like so much sketch comedy, it's always best to leave us wanting more, rather than overdosing viewers into exhaustion .