With ‘Robot,’ it’s no kiddie pool

Though Cartoon Network corrals its not-for-children series into a programming bloc it calls Adult Swim -- home to “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law” and “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” among other exercises in dry irony -- these shows are aimed at a special kind of adult. That is, one in touch with his/her (but more likely his) inner 12-year-old -- 13-year-old possibly -- but possessed also of a sense of pop-cultural history and a practical knowledge of such grown-up things as sex, drugs and a boring job.

“Robot Chicken,” which premieres Sunday, is the latest addition to the late-night franchise, and it is quite in the established team/teen spirit. Created by Seth Green (who played Oz on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Scott Evil in the “Austin Powers” movies) and Matthew Senreich (a journalist specializing in comics and related collectibles), it’s a stop-motion sketch comedy that uses commercially available action figures and dolls along with some cleverly sculpted original figures mostly to parody television, especially the television they grew up on, and the wider range of American obsessions that TV represents.

Green and Senreich have created a show that will resonate most strongly with their twentysomething peer group but should find a friend in anyone not too sophisticated or proud to laugh at a robot falling on its, so to speak, can. The premiere episode features Transformers in a PSA for prostate cancer prevention; there is an elaboration of the familiar “This is your brain on drugs” spot; a “Bloopers” show with supposed outtakes from “Star Trek,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Pokemon,” “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Dukes of Hazzard”; the Fox-ready “World’s Most One-Sided Fistfights”; and Teletubby Po smoking a cigarette. The animation is just as good as it needs to be, and it gets some mileage from being no better.

The humor is fundamentally low and juvenile and frequently scatological -- it is, at bottom, a matter of making toys do things toys are not supposed to -- but it hits far more often than it misses, and when it misses it is still amusing to look at. These jokes wouldn’t be half as funny if they were delivered by human actors, but they are not. (Among those providing voices are Green and such ringers as Scarlett Johansson, Burt Reynolds, Mark Hamill and Macaulay Culkin). It’s something like the Trey Parker/Matt Stone marionette riff “Team America,” but better, and, just as important, shorter. It clips along at great speed and gets out of your hair in 15 minutes, an example more TV shows could profitably follow.

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‘Robot Chicken’

Where: Cartoon Network

When: 11:30 to 11:45 p.m. Sunday

Ratings: TV-14-D (may be unsuitable for children under 14, with an advisory for suggestive dialogue)

Creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich.