Waving around a decapitated deer's head, shock comic Tom Green proclaims this will be his last dead animal gag ever.

You can almost hear his fans weep for the passing of an era.

Get used to it. Much of The New Tom Green Show -- debuting on the Comedy Network in Canada in an encapsulated form tomorrow at 11 p.m. on j -- is like watching a juvenile delinquent turn up for the first day of his first grown-up job.

Green's new show is clearly cut from the same cloth that gave the world Carson and David Letterman, who Green filled in for earlier this summer.

Gone is the casual apparel; Green now sports Hugo Boss suits. Even the set seems transported from TV's golden age, as do his cohorts. Joining him are Glenn Humplik, a friend who worked with Green on his old MTV show, and piano player Ed Scott, an 83-year-old TV veteran who wrote music for The Garry Moore Show in the 1960s.

But should loyal Green followers fear that the former Mr. Drew Barrymore has jettisoned all of his antics -- or even developed a sense of good taste -- they needn't worry.

In addition to the deer's head -- its severed hooves are also used in an unscripted dance number -- there is a hitchhiking excursion that results in excessive drinking and subsequent vomiting/unconsciousness, as well as a trip through the streets of Quebec with a French-English dictionary and a lexicon of phrases that are offensive in any language.

And despite the Tonight Show-style set, there's still Andy Dyck wrestling Humplik to the ground as shock rocker Marilyn Manson and his girlfriend watch on, or Green encouraging a monkey to scramble over him as he interviews skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.

The Ottawa-born Green -- who let his bout of and treatment for testicular cancer be broadcast for the world to see -- has always been an acquired taste, but, now at the age of 31, he's clearly at a crossroads, hoping to expand his fanbase without alienating the people who paid money to see Freddy Got Fingered.

And he just may do it.

The New Tom Green Show offers definitive proof of what his followers have known or at least suspected all along -- that Green is a refreshingly funny guy, whether he's dancing with a deer's head or not.