Happy!

Meloni’s performance and the strength of the source material will keep the show afloat for interested viewers. But based on the first two episodes, it’s an acquired, specific taste.

By the end of the second hour, the series becomes an entertainment best absorbed in doses, as the initial excitement calcifies into a kind of apathy that detracts from the appeal Meloni and Oswalt grant to the story.

Meloni is terrific as usual--a long way from the solid Elliot Stabler on “SVU,” but it’s a stretch to appreciate a “hero” who describes his life as “an ever-swirling toilet that just won’t flush” and follow his cracked personality. With only two episodes to judge from, the jury is out on Happy! My guess, though is that it’s an acquired taste and only for certain people.

At one extreme, you want Santa dead. At the other, it can get to be ho ho hum in a hurry.

Other than Hailey and Happy all the characters are a different shade of terrible, which gets kind of boring unless you’re tuning in only for the fight scenes that invariably end in bloodbaths.

Frankly, it's an odd fit for Syfy, closer in tone to AMC's "Preacher" than anything else, with perhaps a touch of another graphic novel brought to screen, "Sin City," for good measure.

Meloni holds things together admirably but even his rousing comedic inventiveness gets drowned out by the empty edginess that Taylor & Co. have evinced here.