Comedy Central has announced that it’s ordered Jeff And Some Aliens, a recurring feature on the network’s animation grab-bag TripTank, to a full series. The network has ordered 10 episodes of the dark comedy, which is produced by Video Lou, a.k.a. writers Sean Donnelly and Alessandro Minoli. (Meanwhile, TripTank itself has already been renewed for a 20-episode second season, set to start later this year.)
Jeff And Some Aliens stars comedian Brett Gelman as Jeff, the world’s most average man, whose already awful life gets considerably worse when three aliens burst into his apartment with a mission from the heavens. The trio—green-skinned, endlessly cheerful, and constantly clad in nothing but tighty-whiteys—have been sent by “the Galactic Council” to watch Jeff and decide if the human race is worth saving. The TripTank shorts all follow a predictable pattern of mayhem: Jeff is depressed, and so the aliens do something well-meaning but deeply horrific—triple-penetrating his mom as part of a cancer cure, for instance, or stealing someone’s skin and sewing him inside it—to cheer him up. It’s intensely dark stuff, with Gelman’s great-but-dour voice acting and the intentionally off-putting visuals only heightening the nihilistic vibe.
Getting ahead of the inevitable pitchfork mobs that spontaneously generate after anything happens, ever, Donnelly and Minoli have already acknowledged their show’s resemblance to another Comedy Central series about an everyman forced to adjust to science fiction intruding into his every day life. “We’d like to beat the trolls to the punch and be the first to say: ‘They canceled Futurama for THIS?!,’” the pair declared, in an act of self-effacing modesty that will in no way stop people from yelling, “They canceled Futurama for THIS?!” after they watch the show.