I gotta say...I'm a Matt Walsh fan. Back on the Upright Citizens Brigade, he was hilarious. Then he was a Daily Show correspondent for a while. He's also great in the movie Martin and Orloff. So of course when I saw the commercial for Comedy Central's new show Dog Bites Man, I was immediately excited. The show will premiere tonight at 9:30 central on Comedy Central. I was trying to find some more information about it (the main point is a parody of local news) and all I can say is Holy mixed reviews!

The bad - Newsday: "This bite needs a shot in the arm"

There may well never be - never was, and never will be - a world more ripe for scorn, parody or flat-out ridicule than the local TV newsroom....

So, how did the team behind Comedy Central's "Dog Bites Man" so thoroughly muck the whole thing up? This isn't to say there aren't a couple of funny lines here (there are) or that the characters aren't ridiculously implausible (they are, and that's fine to a point). But it's almost as though the production team - led by Dan Mazer of "Da Ali G Show" - wandered into a candy store and, not knowing what to grab off the shelf, decided to grab everything. In its zeal to zing local TV news, "Dog" loses any flavor of authenticity, which is absolutely essential for effective satire.

When the station manager calls to tell Tillie she's got to get four extra minutes on the Iron Man story - four minutes that, for some reason, are impossible to get - she worries that she'll lose her job. Not to worry, says old pro Beekin: "We can save any segment ... remember that segment when we did the world's fattest pets" and all the tapes were lost? "You mean when we got those two rabbits," she asks, "and we tied them together to look like a big fat one?"

Kind of amusing, right? Kind of ridiculous, too, and "Dog Bites Man" never rises above this level.

The good - Relish: "GOOD BOY: Comedy Central's Dog Bites Man is all about the laughs"

For anyone worried that Comedy Central peaked in recent years, fret no more -Dog Bites Man (10:30 p.m. Wednesday) is here.

The improvised sitcom, about the workings of a local TV news department, is the best thing to happen to Comedy Central in years. Dog skewers local TV news in the same way that Reno 911! does local police departments.

The correlation between the shows is extremely close. Both are about reality-show crews following the day-to-day workings of an office of loonies. The employees are dimwitted and highly inappropriate, lacking in depth or decorum.

If anything, Dog might be a little too much like Reno, minus the redneck element. But, hey, replicating Reno is hardly the worst sin that a show could commit.

Of course, UCB and similar things always had a quirky sense of humor that people either get and enjoy, or are turned off by. This could be the reason for such mixed reactions. At any rate, I know I'll be checking it out.

TVGuide.com: How did Dog Bites Man come together? Matt Walsh: It was originally a pilot for NBC, and then Comedy Central picked it up. Dan Mazer, the creator, basically wanted to do a show where he could bring together improv with a scripted sitcom type show. He [put together a cast that includes] myself, Zach Galifianakis, who plays the director, Andrea Savage, who plays the producer, and A.D. Miles, who plays the production assistant, and we acted out scenarios and developed scenes in an office before going out and hitting the road as this local news crew.

TVGuide.com: Do you watch local news broadcasts? Walsh: Yes, and it's really funny stuff. Recently, I think I saw a story on what cereal stays crispiest in milk. I saw another one on the difficulties women face when they are bra shopping. It was during sweeps, so obviously they thought it was a good idea to mix some breasts in to their news coverage.