HOSTILE ACTS.

Hostility may be the engine of humor, but the broadcast networks dread its snarl. Whenever they air a truly mean sitcom, such as the long-gone "Buffalo Bill" or "Action," the audience flees, so TV executives have learned to muffle their comedies' barbs in "Only kidding" smirks and "You're the greatest" hugs. Even on "Seinfeld," which forbade hugs and learning, the core foursome reserved their mockery for outsiders, for the close-talkers and re-gifters. They were there for one another--the network made sure that we saw the love beneath.

So "The Sarah Silverman Program," much the meanest sitcom in years--and one of the funniest--premieres this week, perforce, on Comedy Central. Silverman, the telescope-necked comedienne, has had trouble finding the right showcase for the contrary elements of her persona: the post-feminist tomboy who's sexually cocky and emotionally frigid, the eerily alert counterpuncher who's totally self-involved. (In her 2005 concert movie, "Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic," Silverman makes out with her own mirrored image.) She is best known for jarring "The Aristocrats," the documentary about a legendary joke, with her deadpan claim that "Joe Franklin raped me," and for dropping the epithet "chinks" into a joke on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." Unlike many comedians, Silverman excavates prejudice less by digging into her own background (though in one episode she insincerely promises "full-frontal Jew-dity") than by strip-mining the turf of other minorities, particularly blacks and gays. Her game is to throw out stereotypes in a little-girl voice and with a winsome look that suggests no offense can legitimately be taken. You might admire Silverman's boldness, or you might feel that there's something sneaky in her appropriation of slurs that never wounded her--that it's the standup equivalent of the person who cuts in line and then can't believe you object.

The show's credits beguile us into anticipating yet another wry, candid-seeming look at a comedian's private life, a la "Seinfeld" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; as a low-tech slide show on Silverman and her friends and her Los Angeles neighborhood clicks by, she says things like "Hi, I'm Sarah Silverman, and I'm just like you. I live in Valley Village, I don't have a job, and my sister pays the rent!" But Silverman's show is both shaggier in structure and flintier in sensibility than its precursors. After gulping cough syrup, the Sarah character takes a "Pee-wee's Playhouse"-style animated trip into space and has a giddy exchange with the Loch Ness monster. She also regularly breaks into soulful songs that end up being, in a childhood-anxiety sort of way, about poop ("I really love my life and I'll also tell you what / If I find a stick I'll put it in your mama's butt / And pull it out and stick / The doody in her eye!"). The show's only formal rigor is Sarah's own: her beefs and run-ins always showcase her intolerance (at the expense of Silverman's winsome streak). When a driver in a red Ford Focus pulls up alongside her red Ford Focus and cheerily observes, "Hey, same car!," Sarah parrots his remark with an expression of utter spastic disgust.

When God admires one of her songs and materializes in front of her, Sarah, surprised that he's black, inquires, "Are you God's black friend?" Later, calling him Black God, she reassures him, "I'm not one of those people who's, like, 'Oh, God is black--is he going to steal the moon, or something?' " (Much of Silverman's comedy springs from the device of digging the hole deeper.) To prove her color blindness, she seduces him. "Who made you, monkey? Who created you?" he intones during their lovemaking. "You did!" she cries, squeakily.

In the morning, when Black God wants to cuddle and take her to Heaven to meet Thomas Jefferson, she squirms away--as if! Just another notch on her belt, and she's right back to watching TV in her sweatpants, confiding in her dog (played by her actual dog), and hanging out at the local cafe with her straight-man sister, Laura (played by her actual sister), and her red-bearded gay neighbors, Steve (Steve Agee) and Brian (an endearing ...