‘Make ‘Em Laugh’

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but PBS has put together another of its big, multipart documentary specials, with accompanying coffee-table book and operators standing by. “Make ‘Em Laugh” is six hours on the subject of American comedy, and it is very easy to watch, even all at once, as I did. (PBS will spread them out over three Wednesdays, beginning tonight.)

The quibbles first. While such mega-docs seem to have become a staple of public TV, there is often, as here, less to them than meets the eye: By attempting to be big and impressive, they can, even at an extended length, wind up taking their subject at a gallop, like a five-day tour of seven European nations, so that even while large and long they are less than definitive or deep.

Neither does writer-director Michael Kantor, who also wrote and directed the 2004 PBS six-part-special-with-a-book “Broadway: The American Musical,” seem to have a personal take on the material. But he organizes it smoothly -- oddballs, families, slapstick, rebels, wise guys and satire are the subjects in order of episode -- and spices it liberally with commentary. I wish more of it had come from comedians and less from “cultural historians,” but really I’m just praising with faint damns. This is funny stuff, tied up in a ribbon of smart.

Here’s Joan Rivers on Lucille Ball: She had the courage to make a fool of herself, “because basically she knew she was pretty.” Kaye Ballard on Jack Benny: “You laughed at what he was thinking, never what he said.” Chris Rock on Eddie Murphy: “The only comedian in the history of the business with a mystique.” Roseanne Barr on the upward mobility of the marginal: “If you make fun of your own in front of the dominant culture here, you can move next door to ‘em.” Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Richard Lewis, Bill Irwin, Jeff Foxworthy, Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke also talk.

As much of anything in the world, comedy is a matter of taste -- I am less inclined to laugh at the Three Stooges than I am at Steve Martin, and you may be the reverse. Gallagher fans, your man is absent. But the series hits most every comic, act or family sitcom of accepted greatness, and elevates a few who sometimes get less respect (though not Rodney Dangerfield): Paul Lynde, Phyllis Diller, Moms Mabley and Cheech and Chong are here alongside Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Phil Silvers, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor and Rock (possibly the youngest performer here, except for the Judd Apatow Kids). A joke takes only seconds to do its business, and so there are lots of clips, some unfamiliar -- this is the first film I’ve ever seen of Tom Lehrer, the satirical singer-pianist -- and some no less hilarious for being seen a dozen times.

Even when it’s shallow, comedy is deep, because it goes to our core -- even to that part of the prehistoric brain that must have made Og laugh when Ug knocked his head at the door to the cave, or Ig stepped in mammoth droppings. Man is the animal who knows how to use a whoopee cushion, and he will.

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robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘Make ‘em Laugh: The Funny Business of America’

Where: KCET

When: : 8 tonight

Rating: TV-PG-LS (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for coarse language and sex)