‘Jackie Woodman’ comes with an acid tongue and hard edge

In “The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman,” a lowish-budget sitcom debuting tonight on IFC, comedian Laura Kightlinger plays a marginal screenwriter, carless in L.A. As she explains her condition to a ridiculing colleague at the indie-film magazine where she works: “I was born without the use of a car, and so to me it’s normal.”

It’s a line that might pop up on any number of sitcoms, but out of Kightlinger’s mouth it sounds less pretty; you can hear the tinge of anger.

As comedian-actresses go, the tall, gangly and witheringly sarcastic Kightlinger is almost a throwback to an earlier era -- the “handsome woman” in dress slacks, with an acid tongue and hard-knocks wit. It was part of Katharine Hepburn’s comedic charm, or later, Lucille Ball’s.

Kightlinger, who can also be seen as a witheringly sarcastic housewife in HBO’s “Lucky Louie,” has hardly had that kind of career, though. Times have changed, which perhaps accounts for the edge of weary anger she typically conveys.

For another thing, Kightlinger’s a great comedian but a rather stone-faced, monotone actress, and she is neither butch nor feminine enough to make the package outsized; if you want stardom talking the way Sarah Silverman does, it helps immensely to look like Silverman (conversely, you can make yourself grotesque, a la Roseanne).

IFC is pairing “Jackie Woodman,” which Kightlinger wrote with David Punch, with “The Business,” a sequel to “The Festival” in which a straight-to-DVD schlockmeister named Vic Morgan, the producer of the successful “Drunk Chicks” videos, tries to go legit by producing an indie horror movie (as part of this he’s converting, badly, to Judaism, altering his last name).

Soon, the money guy wants Morgan(stein) to hire a porn queen as the lead, the development girl is threatening to quit and the arty young director is watching his vision go down the tubes.

Yeah, that old saw. Both “The Business” and “Jackie Woodman” are satires about Hollywood’s dispossessed. Both have the feel of the industry’s true underclass, but “Jackie Woodman” is the one that rises to something approaching pathos. Kightlinger, who wrote on “Will & Grace” for several seasons and who, like Silverman, has been a regular in L.A.’s alternative comedy scene for years, has created a jazzy roman a clef for herself.

Yeah, I know: Show me a comedian/actress/screenwriter riffing on her plight and I’ll show you a Friday night at the Skirball Center. But Kightlinger can look outward too, and her dialogue snaps -- fear and self-loathing mixed with the observationally humorous. Says Jackie to the two lesbians moving into her building who introduce themselves as “partners”: “Ah, it’s always a square dance with you people.” Says Jackie in that same episode to her apartment manager: “I just saw this amazing movie by this guy who cranks out films the way my cousins make fat kids, and I can’t write my name with a toothpick and a can of frosting.”

In tonight’s debut episode, a car accident with Sally Kellerman has Jackie having to rescue her best friend Tara (Nicholle Tom) from the clutches of a Scientology-like self-help center called Platform. “This is where robots come to gas up,” Jackie says of the place.

It’s an aside, but it makes you want to be there for the next one.

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‘The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman’

Where: IFC

When: 11 tonight

Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17)

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‘The Business’

Where: IFC

When: 11:30 tonight

Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17)