‘Yeah, I’m a Duck, So What?’ : The Irreverent ‘Duckman’ Is Looking for Viewers

Angrier than Sean Penn in a mob of paparazzi, more aroused than Madonna after a visit to an NBA locker room, able to offend any politically correct notion with a single flap of his beak. Look! Deep in the late-night hinterlands of cable. It’s a bird. It’s a plane (er, pain). It’s “Duckman.”

He could be the funniest duck in the world. But airing Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. on cable’s USA network, the animated, foul-talking fowl is a long way from supplanting Daffy or Donald as America’s favorite quacker, even if he has become a party-night hero on college campuses around the country.

“It’s gratifying to know that college kids have gatherings to watch the show because we are after that kind of hipness,” said Ron Osborn, who, with his partner, Jeff Reno, writes and executive produces the series. “But my response to them is, ‘Go home and watch it separately so our ratings can go up!’ ”

The first 13 episodes of “Duckman,” which premiered last March, averaged about 1 million households each week--not bad for cable, especially since it airs at a time when the bulk of its target audience is out on the town, “or drunk,” Reno joked. But having come out of network television, the producers admit to being frustrated.

“We’ve never worked so hard on something that was seen by so few,” Osborn said.

Still, the ratings and critical acclaim (the Wall Street Journal this week named it one of the 10 best shows of the year) have been sufficient for USA to order a new batch of 13 episodes. Until those are ready early next year, the first 13 will continue in reruns.

Reno, 40, and Osborn, 42, have difficulty describing their show in succinct terms. Based on a 1989 underground comic book by Everett Peck, who works on the animation end of the program for the Klasky Csupo studio, “Duckman” centers on an irascible, sarcastic duck, voiced maniacally by “Seinfeld’s” Jason Alexander. Alexander has described his character as a cross between Maxwell Smart, Groucho Marx and Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden.

But it’s also a family show: Duckman, a widower, lives with his sister-in-law, his oldest son Ajax and his two-headed son named Mambo and Charles. He has a best friend and partner in his detective agency, Cornfed, a pig.

The producers say their best episodes hit on an emotional twang about love, friendship or fatherhood, often a sad, even poignant note that suggests Duckman’s (and perhaps Everyman’s) luckless plight in a world that continually dumps on him.

What probably stands out most, though, is the irreverent skewering of everything from television to modern artists to sexual harassment to the information superhighway to tabloid journalism--and, especially, to political correctness.

In the last episode of the first batch, for example, a group of stand-up comedians--parodies of Andrew Dice Clay, Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne and Tom Arnold--hire Duckman to dig up dirt on a new comic who has eclipsed them in popularity with an act that is entirely free of offensive jokes. Duckman is outraged:

“I can’t let a lowdown scum like that put you guys out of work. This world is depressing enough without a few insults, slurs and good honest laughs at other people’s expense. A case like this you take for the principle.”

“We do love social satire and we love to tilt at windmills, but basically the show is about this silly duck,” Osborn said. “He is a character that can rant about a lot of things that we would like to say, even if we can’t admit it in polite company. But he’s also this guy who gets up every day and, against all odds, pushes a rock up a hill that every evening rolls back down on top of him. He is a jerk, but also vulnerable, a victim of this cesspool of a world, somewhat like all of us, and I think that makes him very human.”

With its heady content--one minute making fun of Andy Warhol, the next engaged in a two-headed debate over the merits of Jungian vs. Freudian philosophy--the show is obviously aimed at adults, even if the wild colors and talking animals probably appeal to children as well. The producers said there’s nothing in the show they’d be embarrassed for children to see--they even made Duckman quit smoking (though he has lapsed once or twice)--but USA has deliberately scheduled it late to preclude most youngsters from stumbling upon it.

Reno and Osborn, who have written for “Moonlighting,” “Night Court” and “Mork & Mindy,” said that “Duckman” has been the most creatively rewarding experience of their careers.

“There are no restrictions. There’s no reason you can’t write a scene on the moon, and if a character gives you problems you can just erase him,” Reno said. “The good news and bad news is that you can go anywhere your imagination wants to go. So it’s daunting, but at the same time really fun.”

While he doubts that they will stay in animation for the rest of their working days, Reno says that many of the most innovative and edgy programs on television these days are animated--”The Simpsons,” “Ren & Stimpy,” even “Beavis and Butt-head”--because the networks tend to dilute most live-action shows.

“They are just ape over this idea of likability--that every character has to be likable,” Reno said. “But animation--I guess because people know it’s not literally real--gives you and the character more latitude. And that lets you comment on all kinds of things without fear that someone is going to say, ‘That’s too mean’ or ‘Too intellectual’ or ‘This guy is not lovable.’ ”