The Goode Family features characters from the mind of Beavis and Butt-head/King of the Hill creator Mike Judge. Bill Harris, however, doesn’t judge this animated sitcom to be good at all.

The Goode Family doesn’t live up to its name.

And that’s a shame, since we were cheering for this new animated series to be, well, good, given its unique and funny premise.

The Goodes are so obsessed with being environmentally conscious and politically correct that they regularly tie themselves up in contradiction-laden knots. In this day and age, that’s a ripe subject for comedy, is it not?

But, alas, having seen the first episode of The Goode Family, which debuts Wednesday (Citytv and ABC), we were pretty disappointed.

We expected more chuckles, since the Goode Family comes from the creative mind of Mike Judge, the man behind Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill. Judge provides the voice of do-gooder dad Gerald Goode, while the other main voices come courtesy of Nancy Carell (gullible mom Helen), David Herman (dim-witted adopted African son Ubuntu), Linda Cardellini (embarrassed biological daughter Bliss) and Brian Doyle Murray (stereotypical right-wing grandpa Charlie).

The closest we came to laughing occurred right at the beginning, when we noticed that one of the bumper stickers on the back of the Goodes’ hybrid car says, “Support our troops … and their opponents.”

It’s also kind of amusing that the Goodes believe they have turned their dog Che into a vegan. The dog, of course, was not consulted, and he salivates uncontrollably when any other member of the animal kingdom crosses his path.

Other than that, there just weren’t a lot of laughs there, sad to say.

Maybe we personally have reached the point of animation saturation. There has been a glut of new animated series in recent years, and even in recent months (Bob & Doug, Sit Down, Shut Up), and all of them have been lacking in their own respective ways.

Even Judge, speaking for himself and his creative team, admitted, “We were all sick of animation and they sucked us back in.”

Maybe there’s only so much you can do with animation if you’re going to stick religiously to the sitcom format.

We could watch reruns of The Simpsons (from its classic era, at least), Family Guy and South Park all day, every day, and consistently find something to amuse us. But if you take the entirety of what those shows have offered in terms of irreverence and increasingly shocking subject matter and language, seriously, how much room is left for a new animated sitcom to manoeuvre?

Maybe it’s like that old Seinfeld bit, when he observes that at a certain point in our adult lives, we just don’t have any openings for new friends. You seem very nice, but we’re not hiring right now.

“I’m not an expert, but it seems like people don’t just say, ‘I feel like watching an animated show,’” Judge said. “I think they see something they like, and something grabs them, the characters, whether it’s animated or not.”

That’s our point, really. Animated or not, is The Goode Family good enough to grab you?

Well, to quote Gerald Goode’s first words, “Look who’s got elephant dung!”

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca