Forget 'Saturday Night Live.' In TV's latest sketch comedies, an old form learns new tricks
Sketch shows are the stealth bombers of television. Compared to the dramas and sitcoms that dominate the conversation in this Triple-Platinum Age of television, they can seem ephemeral, the well-fortified institution of "Saturday Night Live" notwithstanding - a fancy version of something amateurs put on in coffeehouses and YouTubers post with a smartphone and half an idea.
Yet this perceived lack of importance makes them an excellent vehicle for distinctive, even oddball points of view. Nothing on television in recent years has been more ambitious or radical than HBO's "Random Acts of Flyness," a sort of Afrocentric art-variety show by way of Jean-Luc Godard from the Brooklyn-based filmmaker Terence Nance; or Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's
