Like Michael Richards, who was great as Kramer but not as great in NBC's half-hour Michael Richards Show.

        Or Robert Smigel, as his new TV Funhouse at 10:30 p.m. today on Comedy Central proves.

        It's not nearly as entertaining as his delightfully demented X-Presidents or The Ambiguously Gay Duo cartoons on Saturday Night Live, or his contributions to Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

        He's the voice of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jesse Ventura on Conan's “Clutch Cargo”-style routines, where Mr. Smigel's lips are super-imposed on a still photograph of a person being “interviewed” by Mr. O'Brien. He's also the voice of Conan's Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog puppet.

        All of these bits are 100 times better than the TV Funhouse, a bad parody of children's TV shows hosted by a dimwit (Doug Dale). This low-budget Pee-wee's Playhouse is populated with preposterous puppets — a dog constantly chasing its tail, a turtle that travels through toilets, and a rooster banished from the henhouse. In the pilot, the puppets desert Doug and end up in a Tijuana bordello.

        Most disappointing are the cartoons, Wonderman and The Baby, the Immigrant and the Guy on Mushrooms. Where are the X-Presidents when you need them?

        Fortunately, SNL will continue to have the X-Presidents — Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and George Bush, who received crime-fighting super-powers when struck by lightning at a celebrity golf outing.Mr. Smigel will produce 10 SNL cartoons this season, plus keeping up appearances on Conan.

        “We've worked it out with NBC where I'm going to stay on Saturday Night Live and stay on Conan, because the money is much better over there,” said Mr. Smigel at a press conference with TV critics last summer.
       @subHed:Successful sketches
       @text:

        The former Cornell University student (he wanted to be a dentist) began writing for SNL in 1985. He wrote SNL's “Schmitts Gay Beer” commercialand sketches about William Shatner at a Star Trek convention and “Da Bears” football fans.

        He left in 1993 to be the first head writer for Conan. Three years later, he produced Dana Carvey's short-lived ABC show that savaged its sponsors. Then he started producing the SNL cartoons while developing the TV Funhouse show.

        “This has been through so many incarnations,” the Manhattan native said. NBC, Comedy Central and Fox passed on the series before Comedy Central programmers changed their minds.

        “I just wanted to have a place where I could do more cartoons and explore more ideas beyond the limit of 10 per season . . . And Comedy Central seems like the best place for it,” he said.

        “(Network) prime-time is tough,” he said. Plus, he knew his mixture of puppets, cartoons, live-action and films was radically different from what viewers expect from 8 to 11 p.m.

        “It's too goofy for prime-time,” he said.

        Goofy I could watch. But most of TV Funhouse just isn't funny.

        John Kiesewetter is TV/radio critic for the Enquirer. Write to him at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax: 768-8330; E-mail: Jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.
       

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