No strangers, just strangeness

The latest addition to Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” programming block, “Tom Goes to the Mayor” (premiering tonight) is a fairly silly barely animated series in which, um, Tom goes to the Mayor. Tom is Tom Peters, the “newest resident” of the town of Jefferton, a rectangular, right-angular sort of place which, to judge by the opening credits, subsists on the manufacture of “tiny guitars” and snow globes, as well as the usual service industries: fast food, less-fast food, and so on.

Tom is “an entrepreneur” and “full of ideas.” The Mayor -- this is the second CN series, after “The Powerpuff Girls,” to feature a character identified only as “the Mayor” -- is a habitual liar, an arsonist and a dangerous loon, who hears what he wants to hear when he wants to hear it. His office is in a mini-mall, alongside Pizzatown and the 98% Store, and he spends his time there watching TV until Tom, whom he does not remember from time to time, comes to rouse him from his torpor. And then things go very bad very quickly -- in this sense, each episode is kind of like a horror movie.

In the first of tonight’s two vignettes, for example, Tom’s concern with child safety inspires the Mayor to fill the town with 20,000 bear traps, “making it the largest concentration of traps in the region.” “You sold me on this idea,” the Mayor tells Tom, whose idea it was not in the first place, and who is later forced to admit to the Town Council, “I can guarantee that a number of kids will be injured or possibly ... killed in the project. Thank you.”

Created by twentysomething Mutt-Jeff college pals Tim Heidecker (who plays Tom) and Eric Wareheim (the Mayor), and executive-produced and co-written by Bob Odenkirk (of “Mr. Show” and “The Ben Stiller Show” fame, to use the word advisedly), it’s more funny strange than funny ha-ha. But it fits well with such “Adult Swim” predecessors as “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Sealab 2021,” matching their strangely low-key vibe (marked by sudden bursts of mayhem), their fascination with the blandest reaches of human experience and their deadpan semi-improvisational voice.

From Morgan’s Creek to Hooterville and beyond, the small town has long been the stuff of American satire.

But Jefferton is neither the picket fence hamlet of yesteryear, nor the pixilated campuses of series such as “Northern Exposure” and “Ed” (which posit blue-state interests in red-state climes). It is a place of pasteboard, cinder block, cheap paneling and franchise after franchise -- an accurate picture, in other words, of the contemporary disposable hamlet.

Likewise, the visuals have less to do with classic animation than with Flash and PowerPoint and the sort of stuff ordinary folk make on office machinery and home computers. (Tom makes postcards of himself to send to his wife, Joy, off visiting her ex-husband.)

It’s a Copy Shop aesthetic. The characters are represented by photographs treated so they look as if they’ve been photocopied a few times. Only their eyes move, and not often.

Guest voices in the series include David Cross, Odenkirk’s “Mr. Show” partner; Jack Black and Kyle Gass, a.k.a. Tenacious D and “Mr. Show” vets; Jeff Goldblum; and Jeff Garlin of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Odenkirk appears in live-action spots, which are the funniest thing in the show -- in one, he is Mike Foxx, host of “Scared Safe,” declaring, “I’ve lost 13 of my own children” to such dangers as sand rash, wind poisoning and deadly crickets -- and which prompt one to wonder why one doesn’t see more of him these days. He is “currently in development on a number of feature film projects to direct,” the press notes say helpfully -- and appearing here.

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‘Tom Goes to the Mayor’

Where: Cartoon Network -- Adult Swim

When: 11:30 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-PG V (may be unsuitable for young children with strong advisory for violence)

Executive producer, Bob Odenkirk. Creators, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.