Howie does a Larry

Howie Mandel is one of those survivor-comedians. He’s silly and relentless and you can’t get rid of him; I think this has been scientifically proved. He’s been this way, more or less, since he burst onto the L.A. comedy scene -- or anyway got on “Make Me Laugh” -- with helium voices and bits like blowing up a surgical glove through his nose until it covered his head.

A Canadian Jew could come to L.A. and do this in the late 1970s and make it in show business. If Mandel wasn’t at the level of his peers, of a Letterman or a Leno or a Shandling, he did have something they can lack: a touch of humanity. I got a warm feeling seeing Mandel in the new documentary about the filthiest joke in the world, “The Aristocrats.” Because Mandel’s been around, and “The Aristocrats” is subtly about comics who have been around and still are, even as they remain part of show business’ forgotten class.

Mandel will be 50 this year; some time ago he calculated a look -- shaved head, goatee. Now he looks like an oracle but with the old chutzpah. His latest gambit is a half-hour comedy series on Bravo called “Hidden Howie.”

The show was originally developed at NBC before it ended up on the sister cable network, broad enough now to accommodate “queer eyes” and old Jewish souls. “Hidden Howie” isn’t a bad show, necessarily, but it’s so close to Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” that it’s like that Woody Allen joke about how Allen cheated on his college metaphysics exam by looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to him.

And so here, Howie seems to be borrowing from Larry’s term paper. It’s Mandel schlepping jokes again, only in real time, with friends and problems and phobias. But to do this well requires layers, something Mandel’s comedic persona has never been about.

On “Hidden Howie,” which is subtitled “The Private Life of a Public Nuisance,” Mandel is part hidden-camera prop comic, part neurotic Jew, part family man. The show has a lot of the “Curb” elements -- the obsessive behaviors (Mandel’s germ-phobic OCD prevents him from shaking anybody’s hand), the impatiently patient wife (Julie Warner, managing to say “Howie” about as much as Cheryl Hines says “Larry” on “Curb”), the Jewish relatives (Estelle Harris, George’s mother on “Seinfeld,” playing Mandel’s grandma Nana), the comedian friend-as-himself (Jay Leno to David’s Richard Lewis), the lesser-known comedian friends as lesser-known friends, the real-place settings (Calabasas, it appears, to David’s Brentwood-Palisades corridor).

There is, too, the patter: “Hidden Howie” is one of those “unscripted, improvisational comedies,” which once upon a time was creatively suggestive but now only signals that actors will speak in an offhanded way to suggest the offhanded nature of life itself.

In the first episode, Mandel is trying to land a TV special based on the hidden-camera segments the actual Mandel does on “The Tonight Show.” In these bits, Mandel dons horn-rimmed glasses embedded with camera and goes into public spaces to make a nuisance of himself and capture people’s reactions in the interest of light social satire. Thursday night, we see Mandel try to purchase art supplies to mummify his Nana; in another scene, he’s in a toy store, asking a salesperson to point out a doll that will turn his 15-year-old son gay.

The “Curb” additions make these interludes part of the plot, but, I mean, hidden-camera comedy -- do you really need to hide the camera anymore? “Fear Factor” runs in syndication now.

But Mandel plugs along; he’s a peddler, of himself and his peddler’s bag of hidden-camera bits. It might even be the secret of his weird Borscht Belt integrity. The only trouble, sometimes, is having to sit through it. In “Hidden Howie,” Mandel employs the Jewish comedian’s trusted sidekick -- the Holocaust joke, as Howie agrees to do a survivor benefit at a local Jewish home for the aged when he learns the event is being sponsored by the network executive who can greenlight his special (a scene-stealing Taylor Negron, another “Aristocrats” standout).

That appearance ends in shtick, with Howie being heckled in the temple rec room. “Enough with the jokes. Sing a little,” a woman calls out. The reward of a Larry David is that he takes a Holocaust joke much further -- he stages a dinner scene in which a camp survivor and a contestant from CBS’ “Survivor” fight about who should own the title. He puts it in the now. Come to think of it, I would’ve loved to see Mandel in this “Curb Your Enthusiasm” scene too; he’d have made an antic addition to the table. But I suppose he was busy making his own show.

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‘Hidden Howie: The Private Life of a Public Nuisance’

Where: Bravo

When: 11 p.m. Thursday premiere (moves to 11 p.m. Mondays)

Ratings: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

Howie Mandel...Himself

Julie Warner...Terry Mandel

Co-executive producers Michael Rotenberg and Howie Mandel.