Breeders

It was terrific: dark, fresh, brutal, funny, a little twisted (always a good thing) and very sweary.

They deal with predictable domestic disasters, some of them feebly constructed, but the British realism makes it all feel less sitcomy and manipulative than other shows of its ilk. One of the best treats is the relationship between Paul and Ally.

Each episode feels like a slice of life, complete with laughs, tears, sarcasm, and life’s mundane chores and routines. In the hands of Freeman, Haggard, Blackwell and Addison, it makes for wry, amusing and relatable television.

Breeders’ stark reality of what it’s like to parent young kids these days hits us right in our exhausted funny bones.

The main issue is that so much of what the show presents of them are their surface-level emotions, not the characters themselves. By Episodes 4 and 5, the selectively hidden parts of not just Paul and Ally’s relationship but their past individual histories do float to the surface. The question is if audiences will stick around long enough for those breadcrumbs to guide their way out of the cold.

While Freeman and Haggard give strong performances, the show often plays out like a comedian who has gone too far in trying to figure out what’s funny without seeing what actually works.

The pilot episode of FX’s new dark comedy “Breeders” will be instantly relatable to anyone who’s ever parented young children. ... Subsequent episodes draw focus away from Paul and Allie and their children and expand to include more attention on Paul’s elderly parents and the addition of actor Michael McKean as Allie’s unambitious American father. None of this is bad per se, just not as funny as what’s established in the premiere.

The 10-part series is technically a comedy, but it hits so many pressure points so hard in such rapid succession that if you do laugh it will be through some quite considerable anxiety and pain. I mean that as a compliment.

When writers Addison and Blackwell let “Breeders” wander away from its thesis, and especially when they allow Freeman and Haggard to play messy and complicated, it shows tremendous promise. It’s the kind of show a second-grade teacher might say is “bright, but not living up to its potential.”

The death of a family pet, among other events, leads to an offbeat but earnest meditation on grief (and the bizarre forms it can take), making it clear that the writers are much more adept at exploring darkness with candor and a splash of whimsy than introducing hollow edge to the parenting sitcom. That chapter offers an auspicious dramatic turn to this derivative, rarely laugh-out-loud funny yet wholly promising comedy.

Thanks to its creative team and solid performers, “Breeders” is a reliable comedy that hits all the beats one might expect from its “parenting, but more honest” premise. This adherence to predictable plots is also what keeps “Breeders” from being much more interesting than that.