'Bored to Death'

Jonathan Ames, a Brooklyn-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, has turned his long short story "Bored to Death" into an HBO situation comedy, also titled, though less aptly, "Bored to Death." Each version revolves around a character named Jonathan Ames, a Brooklyn-based writer of fiction and nonfiction who is having a hard time finishing his second novel and is drinking too much white wine -- which is his idea of drinking less alcohol -- and smoking too much pot. As the series opens, his girlfriend is moving out and -- sad, stymied and under the influence of a Raymond Chandler novel -- he goes onto Craigslist to advertise his services as a private detective: "I'm not licensed but maybe I'm someone who can help you."

The short story and the TV show, which premieres Sunday night, share a premise, some scenes and even some dialogue, but before long they go their very separate ways. The original story is a fairly commonplace exercise in postmodern noir in which an idle gesture leads to violence and murder; the series, which is easily my favorite of the fall season, is something much better -- a shaggy-dog comedy that floats on a cloud of fuzzy romantic optimism, the underlying energy of a location-shot fairy tale New York City, and the talents of its art-house leads: Jason Schwartzman, who plays Jonathan; Zach Galifianakis as cartoonist friend Ray, inspired by Dean Haspiel, the real Ames' collaborator on the graphic novel "The Alcoholic"; and Ted Danson, who plays Jonathan's other friend, a sybaritic, fitfully spiritual old-school magazine editor conceived as equal parts George Plimpton and Christopher Hitchens. (The character's name is George Christopher.)

Schwartzman, who is small and thin and dark, does not resemble Ames, who is tall and bald and buff (and a dozen years older). But the actor embodies the sound of the writer's published prose, which is oddly stiff and formal, almost as if he's afraid of doing injury to the language. Similarly, Jonathan is mostly a study in demureness and good manners, his dialogue marked by such figures as, "Excuse me" and "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but . . . ." This sympathy runs through the series, which displays a kind of respectful regard for the many varieties of human strangeness.