David Loughrey gives Comedy Central's latest animated series top marks for offensiveness, but few points for smarts.
Animation is going in the strangest of directions.
In the modern era of the form, post-Disney and starting, perhaps, with The Simpsons, it has become steadily more adult-oriented, somehow stretching the limits of good taste far more than television fare with actors.
Family Guy took it further with its mixture of off-colour stuff, but Drawn Together (Comedy Central, Saturday, July 18, 11.30am) wipes the table of good taste clean, exploring the comedic possibilities of abortion, rape, incest, gay marriage, spousal abuse, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and terrorism.
Those are just the subjects I can mention in a daily paper - there are many more.
Where Kenny in South Park died in every episode, and was usually eaten by rats, nearly all episodes of Drawn Together feature at least one death, and several have random killing sprees.
The show - which Comedy Central is repeating from series one - features a group of stereotypical cartoon characters, from superheroes to one that looks remarkably like Betty Boop, living together reality television-style.
From there, things just get weird.
Episode one features one of the characters creating a marginally politically correct kids' television show, much to the horror of another.
"Acceptance and tolerance? Why, that's a breeding ground for homosexuality," she screams, before taking the matter to "the only place you can be sure will protect the white, Christian status quo - Congress".
Meanwhile, the Betty Boop character waits for the legendary wiener mobile, that will offer up tasty, all-beef hot dogs, but only to the worthy.
The story of the wiener mobile is, of course, written in scars on her inner thigh.
For lovers of South Park - and don't even go here if you are not - a synopsis of Drawn Together makes it sound worthy of a look, but it falls down in one area.
While it is sometimes clever, it is not laugh-out-loud funny.
Where South Park manages to link its humour to its political satire, Drawn Together seems to be offensive for the sake of it.
That would not be an issue if it raised a giggle.
Local programme-makers pick up on the worldwide fascination with all things criminal in the next week with two offerings on TV One.
• Real Crime: The Investigator (Wednesday July 8, 9.30pm) looks into the case of Kevin Harmer, a regional manager at the Selwyn District Council, and a Perendale sheep farmer, who was found guilty of murder after his wife, Jill Thomas, was found dead in a burned out Land Rover.
It asks: did Kevin Harmer kill his wife?
The Missing (Monday 6 July, 8.30pm) finds 14,000 people are reported missing in New Zealand every year, and there are about 250 officially unsolved cases.
It conducts new investigations into these cases.
