Hank Azaria puts away the funny guy act as Dr. Craig Huffstodt on Huff, which makes its debut on the Showtime network tonight at 10 p.m. Azaria plays a psychiatrist who is forced to reconsider just about everything about his "normal" life.

An argument could be made that, in an indirect way, Hank Azaria is seven of the funniest people on the planet.

After all, the 42-year-old Azaria is the voice of Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, Cletus, Duff Man and Dr. Nick, among others, on The Simpsons.

But upon watching the first episode of Huff, which stars Azaria as Dr. Craig Huffstodt, three things instantly become very clear:

1) Huff is not a comedy.

2) We can see why some people thought Huff was great.

3) We also can see why Huff was cancelled by the Showtime network in the United States after two seasons (26 total episodes).

GRAB YOUR ATTENTION

Huff makes its debut on Showcase tonight at 10 p.m., and without revealing anything, it certainly will grab your attention within the first 15 minutes or so.

By the end of the full hour, however, we were thoroughly depressed.

Huff is heavy.

There are no light-hearted "Hi, Dr. Nick!" moments for Dr. Huff.

Azaria's character is a psychiatrist who, through a life-altering occurrence that we alluded to earlier, is forced to reconsider just about everything about his conspicuously common existence.

"I've lived half my life, probably, and everything leading up to this just feels like nothing now, like I've been asleep or something for 42 years," Dr. Huff says at one point.

"I'm awake now. And I don't think I like what I see. But I don't know how to change any of it, not without hurting more people."

Dr. Huff obviously is the centre of attention in most of the scenes, but Azaria is surrounded by some other very famous actors, too.

MEDDLING MOTHER

Blythe Danner (a.k.a. Gwyneth Paltrow's mom) plays Huff's meddling mother Izzy, a role that earned Danner back-to-back Emmy Awards in 2005 and 2006 for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series. In the premiere episode, though, Izzy seems almost too broadly evil to be believable.

Danner's role obviously gains more depth as the series goes on. Heck, it has to; if it doesn't, we'll take Dixie Carter's portrayal of a broadly evil mama in Desperate Housewives any day.

To be fair, though, Desperate Housewives is a quasi-comedy, whereas Huff definitely is not.

Oliver Pratt is Russell Tupper, a lawyer friend of Dr. Huff's. But again, in the premiere episode, Russell seems almost too broadly sleazy to be believable.

Paget Brewster plays Huff's wife Beth, who has a seething hatred for Izzy. The feeling is mutual.

Anton Yelchin is Huff's son Byrd (nice name). It's hard to know if Yelchin is a good actor or not, since we were too distracted by how much he looks like former child star Johnny Whitaker. We half expected to see Sigmund the sea monster emerging from the back yard. Creepy.

There are a couple of truly touching scenes, like when Beth is nattering away obliviously, only to find her husband quietly weeping on their bed, overcome by despair.

'TIRED OF LISTENING'

"I'm just so tired of listening," Huff says later. "A psychiatrist who's tired of listening ... "

Beth responds, "Of course you are, honey. Your patients treat you like a garbage receptacle."

As Homer discovered when he became Springfield's garbage commissioner in a classic episode of The Simpsons, you can't keep stuffing trash into a confined space and assume it isn't going to leak out.

Azaria, of course, would appreciate the Simpsons reference.

Overall, Huff is clearly a high-quality show. But honestly, we can't say we enjoyed all the emotional baggage that was foisted upon us in the first episode.

You'll need to catch your breath after so much Huffing and puffing.