Television review: ‘Bob’s Burgers’

Fox welcomes another animated family to its Sunday-night cartoon block this weekend, and for once it has not been thought up by Seth MacFarlane, the “Family Guy� guy. The less phenomenal but more interesting Loren Bouchard, who produced “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist,� co-created “Home Movies� and created “Lucy: Daughter of the Devil,� is the responsible party, working now, as before, with H. Jon Benjamin, who heads a cast of names familiar from the world of New York comedy, and New York-based comedies: Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, John Roberts and Dan Mintz, whom you will have seen hanging around “Flight of the Conchords,� “The Daily Show� and “Important Things With Demetri Martin.� Jim Dauterive (“King of the Hill�) developed the series with Bouchard.

In “Bob’s Burgers,� Bob Belcher (Benjamin) and family run a struggling burger joint in what looks like a mid-Atlantic seaside town; as the curtain rises, the place is having a “re-re-re-opening,� with annoying son Gene (Mirman) dressed as a hamburger on the sidewalk and precocious younger daughter (Schaal) creating her own daily special: the Child Molester (“It comes with candy�). Later there is a visit from the health inspector, who has heard a rumor that there is human flesh in their meat and cautions Bob he will shut him down if he finds “anything above the 4% allowable by the FDA.�

Of the shows with which Bouchard has been associated, this is the most conventionally premised and, as if to propitiate Fox, possibly the least sophisticated: There is the family name, Belcher; an undertaker named Mort; some bathroom humor; genital jokes. The premiere is nonetheless diverting, if not immediately impressive, and there are nice rhythms and sharp asides and some other things to be said in its favor: It’s a show about the working class — or perhaps better put, the barely surviving entrepreneurial class — that is actually about work. And though the Belchers are hapless, they are not freaks, and though they are often at cross-purposes, they are not dysfunctional. “You’re my children and I love you, but you’re all terrible at what you do here,� Bob tells his kids. “I feel like I should tell you, ‘I’d fire you if I could.’�

Although the animation is certainly limited, it’s “Fantasia� compared with “Dr. Katz.� Still, apart from the fact that characters look funny — they have goggle eyes and a chinlessness that gives them the aspect of turtles — the comedy is primarily verbal: You could just as easily film the script with live actors. At the same time, what gives Bouchard’s series their special life is the way that the loose delivery — the actors record their parts together, and there’s improvisation allowed — bumps up against the inevitable formality of the animation, which is painstaking by nature even when characters don’t move much. That contrast has become the stylistic hallmark of a younger generation’s adult cartoons, and the irritated deadpan that is Benjamin’s signature the very sound of its comedy.

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