A Show as Slick as Chris Isaak’s Pompadour

Critics, shmitics, all this is relative.

The most recent ratings from Nielsen Media Research say that nearly 1.5 million viewers found funny--or at least more acceptable than its opposition--the nation’s lowest-ranking network prime-time series, an animated UPN comedy called “Gary & Mike.” Slightly more tuned in the WB comedy “Nikki.”

And why, if not for laughs, would more than 7 million couch slugs spend any time at all with UPN’s “WWF Smackdown!”?

On the food chain’s opposite pole, so coveted is “Frasier” by NBC that it recently closed a $374-million deal with Paramount to retain the long-running comedy until May 2004. Still bolted to the Nielsen Top 10 with about 18 million viewers, moreover, was the CBS hit “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

The message: Forget other opinions. A funny comedy is one you find funny.

But enough of this evenhandedness. No more humble, receptive-to-other-views Mr. Tolerance. The comedy in prime time with the flat-out biggest laughs--no rebuttal permitted--is Fox’s “Malcolm in the Middle.” Headed tenuously in that direction, too, based on an early sampling, is Fox’s “The Lone Gunmen,” a wittier-by-the-week spinoff from “The X-Files.”

That’s old news, of course. Here’s today’s bulletin:

Arriving tonight on Showtime is a series that has a chance to become television’s next great comedy, one like HBO’s departed “The Larry Sanders Show” that is not only wheezingly funny much of the time but captivates even when not seeking to make viewers laugh.

It’s “The Chris Isaak Show,” a weekly hour that has Isaak, a noted singer of western rock, using his own name in playing a somewhat fictionalized version of himself while performing and acting beside three actual members of his band, Silvertone.

Not having heard of Isaak, and responding badly to guys with shiny pompadours, I was prepared for the worst, expecting a hillbilly rip-off of “Larry Sanders,” that mitzvah from Garry Shandling, whose keyhole view of late-show backstabbing brilliantly straddled fiction and reality.

Instead, “The Chris Isaak Show” is instantly seductive. Not only is Isaak a likable singer and actor who is effortlessly funny, but this is one charming, shiny pompadour of a show. Even my hair is saluting the first four of 17 episodes.

Don’t expect a conventional sitcom pace and barrage of one-liners that derive from networks now relying too much on stand-up comics to deliver guffaws in roles once reserved mainly for comedic actors. In contrast, this series is sneaky funny while moving with the speed of a pleasant drawl. It uses concert performances by Isaak and Silvertone to complement behind-the-scenes peeps at the business and his private life. That mingles him humorously with real celebrities and fictional characters, the latter including his manager, Yola (Kristin Dattilo), and keyboardist Anson (Jed Rees).

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In addition, Chris ventures into the surreal by consulting here regularly with his personal oracle, a bombshell named Mona (Bobby Jo Moore), who lounges nude on a revolving circular bed that, thanks to mirrors, makes her appear at times to be swimming in an aquarium. This is inspired by the real “Mona,” a model operating inside Bimbo’s, a famous club in San Francisco, where this series is set.

The premiere has Chris trying to focus on shooting a music video while being distracted by his erratic co-star, actress Bai Ling as herself, and by a production assistant doing nightly stripteases in the hotel room across the alley from his. Meanwhile, Yola’s attempt to land him a prime-time special brings on her untrustworthy junior colleague, Cody (Greg Winter).

Like “The Larry Sanders Show,” the new series has well-known performers playing themselves, sometimes unfavorably, as when out-of-control Ling is diagnosed by Chris tonight as being “one step away from a butterfly net.”

Driving this is wickedly good writing by executive producers Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, and also actors with masterfully straight faces in a series whose funniest character is Anson. He’s one step from an idiot savant, a classically trained musician who excels on a keyboard while being IQ-challenged and inept at everything else.

The humor can be broad or so delicate that you can almost miss it, as when Anson romances a horsewoman he knows is clearly above him in every way. When she rides off after agreeing to a date, he is so accustomed to failure that he nervously checks his fly to see if it was zipped, a bit of delightful business whose fleeting magic would have been ruined had director Rob Thompson dwelt on it.

Later Anson woos her with food: “You like the horseradish?” She nods. “I thought you would,” he says, “horses and all.”

Rees is clearly doing Dana Carvey doing Garth, and although not original, this brand of buffoon works hilariously, much better in these short bursts than in the “Wayne’s World” movies that grew from sketches Carvey and Mike Myers originated on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

In the second episode, Chris dates a fine-looking female cop who has arrested Anson for ignoring a slew of parking tickets, finding her more erotic as a uniformed authority figure--his eyes subtly reading kinky--than in her feminine civvies.

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Then comes an episode with Chris hoping to ingratiate himself with actress Minnie Driver by keeping her dog while she’s away, Yola getting a sexual thrill from sleep therapy and Anson having great sex that gets sabotaged by spiritual epiphanies.

Arguably the best of these initial hours is the fourth, when Chris worries about a girl who has been stalking him when she suddenly vanishes. Directed by Milan Cheylov, it’s sweet but not saccharine, following Chris’ campaign to successfully bid on a guitar owned by Elvis sideman Scotty Moore en route to a musical climax whose unforced tenderness and irony lift “The Chris Isaak Show” far above the crowd.

Not yet into “Larry Sanders’ ” stratosphere, but that is within sight if it doesn’t falter.

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Q&A; With Chris Isaak

* “Like every American, I think it’s my birthright to be on TV,” the rocker quips. F10

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.