‘Bored’ is delightfully droll

September 18, 2009|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

As Brooklyn writer Jonathan Ames in HBO’s amusing new series “Bored to Death,’’ Jason Schwartzman has a uniquely facial comedy style. Most of the area on his face stays stiff, in a guarded deadpan underneath his mop-top hair. But then his eyes are wide and expressive, like a silent-film actor signifying “wariness’’ to the audience. He also possesses rare comic timing, masterfully positioning his punch lines on the downbeat.

Schwartzman exists on the opposite side of the crazy coin from Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,’’ the show that precedes “Bored to Death’’ on Sunday night. While David brings the East Coast to LA as a raving obsessive who must always have the last word, Schwartzman cabs through Brooklyn and New York like a refugee from an indie movie. He’s melancholic, self-loathing, and lovable. Together, the obnoxious David and the muted Schwartzman - who broke through in the 1998 movie “Rushmore’’ - provide a really satisfying hour of Comic Neurosis TV.

Schwartzman’s Jonathan is loosely based on the real Jonathan Ames, who has ruthlessly and humorously chronicled his own most embarrassing moments, sexual experiences, and heartbreak. The more passive Jonathan in “Bored to Death,’’ which is executive-produced by Ames, has just been dumped by his girlfriend because he drinks too much white wine and smokes too much pot. A writer by trade, the grieving Jonathan becomes fixated on Raymond Chandler and impulsively advertises himself on Craigslist as a private eye. Most online fantasy projections involve sex, but for Jonathan the fantasy is about becoming a man of action and leaving his shame behind.

Really, though, the show is only minimally concerned with the P.I. premise, which recalls Woody Allen’s 1972 movie, “Play It Again, Sam,’’ as well as Andy Richter’s short-lived 2007 series, “Andy Barker, P.I.’’ “Bored to Death’’ never quite qualifies as a neo-noir, as it finds its real subject in smirking at the denizens of the Brooklyn coffee shops and the Manhattan literary parties that Jonathan stumbles through. He hangs out with his high-powered editor, George (Ted Danson), and his cartoonist friend, Ray (Zach Galifianakis), both of whom compensate for Jonathan’s sheepishness with verbal nattering of the most self-involved kind. They are parodies of narcissistic creative types, and in the hands of Danson and Galifianakis (from “The Hangover’’), they’re ridiculous fun.