Dane Cook is a comedian for these "American Idol" times: youthful, accessible and karaoke-good.

His dead-on rendition of an exciting new headliner, circa 20 years ago, coupled with Brad Pitt looks (for a comic) and Internet savvy (www .myspace.com/danecook, with his 1,138,772 "friends"), propelled him into a development deal with HBO. Their latest outing, "Tourgasm," premieres Sunday night.

"Tourgasm" is the Sunday nightcap in a block of comedies, including the third-season debut of "Entourage" and the premiere of a sitcom called "Lucky Louie," starring another comedian, Louis C.K. C.K. previously wrote for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" and "The Chris Rock Show."

Of the two new shows, "Lucky Louie is more interested, because it dares to portray a family that's hard up for cash.

ON THE ROAD

"Tourgasm" is a reality-type show in which Cook goes on the road in a rock-star bus with three lesser lights. It's certain to excite young fans who sent his "Retaliation" CD soaring up the charts and leave everyone else behind.

Cook is as bulletproof among fans as he is unspectacular to anyone who's watched much comedy in the previous two decades. But the pay cable network is coming off a season of arch, Hollywood-insider comedies such as "The Comeback," which not only failed to catch on but also made the network seem dangerously removed from the mainstream.

That trend now lurches in the opposite direction: HBO evidently is eager to co-opt Cook's new media viability, as much as Cook wants the cred that HBO conveys.

For Cook, it's not TV. For HBO, it's not TV, either. It's iTunes.

If "Tourgasm" is steeped in VH1, "Entourage" and "Lucky Louie" exude that old HBO counter-network-intuitiveness, at different extremes.

"Entourage" is basically "Friends" with Hummers, while "Lucky Louie" attempts to repudiate all that "Friends" did to the sitcom in the first place.

MISFIT COMEDY

"Lucky Louie" features a young couple with honest money troubles. Louie is a part-time mechanic in a muffler shop, and his wife, Kim (Pamela Adlon, the voice of Bobby on "King of the Hill"), is a full-time hospital nurse.

It's harshly lighted, and it has a studio audience and laugh track. Watching it, you might feel as if you've happened across a British sitcom or a rerun of "MADtv."

The supporting cast of misfits, used unevenly so far, are unwashed types normally relegated to guest-star status. Michael G. Hagerty, for instance, was the occasionally seen apartment superintendent on "Friends," but here he's Louie's best friend, who cracks weary-wise and smokes cigarettes.

Kim takes the bus to work, and Louie wears T-shirts that have shrunk and faded in the laundry. The sets on "Louie" suggest a decaying burg — doughnut shop, fenced-in playground, check-cashing place.

This all makes it a rare show, socioeconomically; most network TV, since "Roseanne," have abandoned portrayals of the lower middle class.

"Louie," then, recalls the era of "Sanford and Son," "All in the Family" and "Good Times." But this is HBO chasing itself by the tail, for wasn't it "Sex and the City" that ushered in glossy, single-camera quasi-sophistication, which in turn balkanized the multicamera family comedy as red state?

"Louie" opens with a scene that's an intentionally stock network sitcom tableau. The kewpie-doll kid and sardonic dad are at breakfast, and the 4-year-old Lucy (Kelly Gould) peppers her father with cute-as-a-button questions ranging from why it's still dark outside to why dad didn't pay attention in school.

The first answer — "the Earth goes around, and when it turns a certain amount the sun shows on the horizon" — sets up the comic release of the second one — "I was high all the time. I smoked too much pot."

That's the kind of line that doesn't make it out of the writers' room on network shows.

No such shell game is needed on "Louie," which is free to swear and abuse this privilege but is actually pretty judicious.

When Louie refers to his wife's privates, the actual word is less funny than its metaphor as "a chamber of financial ruin."

When Louie discovers Kim wants to get pregnant again, he tells her, "Do you know how much we have in checking? Negative $50. We have to raise $50 just to be broke."

More than the raunch — which keeps migrating to broadcast, anyway — this is what makes "Lucky Louie" interesting. It dares to utter that eight-letter word: "checking," and portray people with no money in their account.