‘Game Over’ means light laughter is about to start

“Game Over,” a computer-animated sitcom premiering tonight on UPN, is the first prime-time computer-animated sitcom in history, the network points out, though it’s too soon to know whether that constitutes a moment of progress or regress in the life of the medium. It concerns the everyday adventures of the Smashenburns, a family of video game characters who continue to live their lives on the other side of the screen after the PlayStation is packed away for the night. It’s “Tron” without the cosmology, but with more laughs. At least more laughs on purpose.

They are more Sims than Simpsons. Father Rip drives in the “Grand Prix,” a race he never wins, or (as the family name implies) rarely even finishes. Wife Raquel (a very old-fashioned name for a video game character, but it could just be a tribute to her enormous breasts) is a high-performing Lara Croft-style adventuress who specializes in finding rare statues, all of them monkeys, but is somewhat less confident around the house. Daughter Judy is a teenager who protests her mother’s work with a “What part of no grave robbing don’t you understand?” picket sign, while their boy Billy is an all-around wannabe too dumbly enthusiastic to know his high self-esteem is unwarranted. “Participant?” he says, reading the trophy he’s been given after losing a bike race. “I ... rule!” Finally there is the doglike Turbo, a thief, a liar, a gambler, a drunk and the latest in a long line of pets with attitude, a breed that goes all the way back to Francis the Talking Mule and Mr. Ed, through Alf (not a pet, but pet-shaped) to Lilo’s Stitch -- though his nearest relation is probably Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

They live in a low-resolution suburban tract house next door to a somewhat superior nuclear family of kung fu fighting, passive-aggressive Shaolin monks. “You know, the city code prohibits subterranean drill-nosed pods after 6,” one of them sweetly points out after Raquel arrives home after 6 in a subterranean drill-nosed pod. As in “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons” -- whose credit sequence “Game Over” essentially inverts-- the world the Smashenburns inhabit is just a decorated version of our own as defined by the rules of situation comedy. The characters have familiar sitcom problems -- dad is jealous of mom’s bigger salary, daughter needs her first bra, mom feels guilty about working so much and gets disastrously involved with the school play, pet encourages son to rob a pawn shop -- with sitcom resolutions, including non-ironic expressions of family love and unity.

But if the series is not particularly ambitious -- if its commentary on this world or the world in which its characters live never achieves the level of satire, and if the ontological ramifications of the premise remain (so far) unexplored, if the jokes often aim low -- it is nevertheless fairly funny.

There is talent here. Creator David Sacks is a “Simpsons” veteran; wrote for and was a producer of the live-action version of “The Tick”; and did time as well on “Third Rock From the Sun,” as did his primary collaborators. Supervising director John Rice worked on “King of the Hill.”

Ultimately, as with any cartoon, it is sold by the actors, who are uniformly good, though special mention must be made of Patrick Warburton (as Rip), an actor whose speaking voice never sounds like anything but the parody of a superhero (he also starred, inevitably, in “The Tick”); E.G. Daily, otherwise employed as Powerpuff Girl Buttercup, as Billy; and Howard Stern sidekick Artie Lange (also of “Mad TV”), channeling Danny DeVito as Turbo. Lucy Liu, of the “Charlie’s Angels” franchise, voices Raquel and “Saturday Night Live” regular Rachel Dratch voices Alice. Jeffrey Tambor (“Arrested Development”) makes brief appearances as Raquel’s boss, Dr. Zed.

Because it takes place in a video game world of limited visual detail and simplified movement, “Game Over” doesn’t have to look any better than an actual video game in order to look “right,” which the producers must count as a blessed economy. The characters are oddly reminiscent of the marionettes from “Thunderbirds” and, in a new and rather charming sort of achievement, the computer graphics often have something of the feel of model shots in cheap science-fiction movies, giving the show a strange patina of what might be called realism.

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‘Game Over’

Where: UPN

When: Premieres 8-8:30 tonight, repeats 9-9:30 p.m. Friday

Rating: The network has rated the show TV-PGL (may not be suitable for young children, with an advisory for coarse language).

Patrick Warburton...Rip Smashenburn

Lucy Liu...Raquel Smashenburn

Rachel Dratch...Alice Smashenburn

E.G. Daily...Billy Smashenburn

Artie Lange...Turbo

Creator, David Sacks. Executive producers, David Goetsch, Sacks, Jason Venokur, Ross Venokur, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach. Director, John Rice. Writers (tonight’s episode) Goetsch, Sacks, Jason and Ross Venokur.