Much like animated spoof series before it, this spin on an African American family is irreverent and endearing.

Thurgood Stubbs, superintendent of the Hilton-Jacobs Projects, stands on a rooftop and proudly surveys his inner-city realm of black poverty, his gray hair pointed skyward like Don King thunderbolts. “Look around you, son,” he remarks to his 10-year-old protege, Calvin, who wants to follow in his footsteps. “One day this will all be yours.”

Funny, yes. Insulting, no.

“The PJs” is a “slap in the face” against blacks just as “The Simpsons” is a slap in the face against whites and every other component of society mercilessly spiked by that great Fox animated series throughout the ‘90s. And as Fox’s “King of the Hill” is an affront to every beer-drinking good ol’ boy in Texas.

In other words, it isn’t.

You can understand African Americans being suspicious--even cynical--about a medium that historically has treated them shabbily when acknowledging them at all. Have we reached the point, though, when every spoof, however harmless, is seen as some sort of cosmic, venal slur? In the matter of “The PJs,” are some black skins really that thin?

Or maybe it’s a case of just a few voices creating a large noise.

The “slap in the face” slam of Fox’s “The PJs” comes from a loose grass-roots coalition of African Americans urging a national boycott of the series that, claims Najee Ali, head of Project Islamic H.O.P.E., “makes a joke out of people’s suffering and poverty.”

Hardly.

The clever new animated comedy is not one of those series that sees blacks through only white eyes. Five of its 10 writers are black, as are two of its creators and executive producers, including Eddie Murphy.

In addition, Murphy is the voice for Thurgood, closely copying the fast-talking lawyer patterned after Johnnie Cochran in “Seinfeld.”

“The PJs” has a great look--think “Foamation,” California Raisins-style--while being set in a roach-infested housing project where Thurgood prefers watching “Wheel of Fortune” to plunging toilets. And where he and his wife, Muriel (Loretta Devine), are surrogate parents to precocious Calvin (Crystal Scales).

Sunday’s episode finds Thurgood ticked off at Calvin and his pal, Juicy (Michele Morgan), for playing hooky, stressing to them how important school was to him when he was their age. Adds Muriel: “He even did some grades twice.”

All right, so Thurgood is clearly no great brain. In a test of IQs, however, Thurgood, his fellow Hilton-Jacobs residents and even his floor mop would clobber mentally challenged Homer Simpson and the rest of Springfield.

“The PJs” leads a bunch of new prime-time animations out of the chute in 1999, among them UPN’s “Dilbert” on Jan. 25 and Fox’s “Family Guy,” set to follow the Super Bowl on Jan. 31. And the WB network has “Baby Blues” and “The Downtowners” in the wings, as TV joins theatrical movies on a virtual animation binge.

It’s unlikely that any, though, will introduce characters more endearing than Thurgood, who Sunday faces one of those crushing moments of career insecurity that everyone confronts from time to time: “I don’t deserve to even have my hands in a toilet.”

Nor will there be anyone quirkier than such Hilton-Jacobs residents as Sanchez (Pepe Serna), who speaks with a voice box thanks to his smoking habit, and Mambo Garcelle, a Haitian voodoo priestess who has also been singled out for thrashing by members of the black coalition. When Thurgood needs help with a plumbing problem, she tells him, “I could sacrifice a rooster.”

Possibly the most fun of all, though, is Mrs. Avery, a wee, cranky old fusspot of a grifter who despises Thurgood and makes him pay dearly in the second episode for treating her with compassion.

“This show,” protester Ali has said, “is very imbalanced and does not have one positive character in it.”

Wrong again. If Thurgood’s attempt to donate food to Mrs. Avery isn’t positive, what is? Although his best efforts inevitably backfire, moreover, he does have the best interests of Calvin and Juicy in mind and is always seeking to be a positive mentor. “If you wanna catch these roaches,” he tells the boys, “you have to start thinkin’ like roaches.”

Criticism has also centered on Sunday’s scene showing Thurgood and his pals around a table cuddling their 40-ounce bottles of beer. But that is no more of an advertisement for heavy drinking than is “King of the Hill” for constantly boozing around the barbecue. Or more lush-laden than red-eyed Homer and his pals draining all those Duff beers at Moe’s Tavern. Sunday night’s episode, in fact, has Homer and a usually strait-laced Ned Flanders going on a drinking bender in Las Vegas.

And just as there are other white images to balance “The Simpsons” on TV, so is there now a variety of African American ones to balance “The PJs.” So what’s the problem?

Murphy is certainly capable of the “ill-informed and insensitive” comedy that Ali accuses him of here, witness the ugly anti-gay jokes that epitomized his stand-up routines. This is another day and another topic, though.

Also, another protest.

And hardly the first time a prime-time comedy has been unfairly targeted by the ethnic police. Memories are still fresh from this season’s earlier blistering attack on UPN’s “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” which was savaged for trying to wring laughs from a fictional black butler in the Lincoln White House.

Fox has been on this firing line itself, most notably with “South Central,” a smart, edgy, highly promising comedy set in South-Central Los Angeles that was driven off the air in 1994 by both low ratings and unfounded charges that it, too, made light of black suffering.

And “The Simpsons” was just as wrongly criticized by Jews in its third season after a brilliant spoof of “The Jazz Singer” that disclosed how Krusty the Clown had been disowned by his rabbi father (the voice of Jackie Mason) for rejecting the family business. The charges of destructive stereotyping were absurd.

Calmer heads prevailed then, as they surely will now, letting “The PJs” rise or fall according to its merits, not the level of heat it generates.

* “The PJs” premieres Sunday night at 8:30, then moves to its regular time slot Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on Fox. The network has rated it TV-PG, suggesting parental guidance for younger children.