Eastbound and Down is a half-hour sitcom that is executive produced by Will Ferrell and airs on HBO. That should give you pretty good idea of what to expect. HBO is the home of the delightful Flight of the Conchords (reviewed here) and popular dramas such as Sex and the City, Deadwood, Rome, Six Feet Under and Entourage.  In other words, its specialty is adult entertainment. Will Ferrell, meanwhile, has shown in the likes of Anchorman that he has a penchant for risqué material like. Eastbound and Down is definitely that.

The basic premise of Eastbound and Down is a familiar one: white-trash slob meets people who are at least half-decent and somewhat intelligent. Result: hysterics. Well, intermit laughs, anyway. In this case the slob is former baseball star Kenny Powers. At the start of Chapter One of Eastbound we get a whizbang trip through his rise to fame as a fastball pitcher and his equal rapid fall into disrepute. Resenting the fact that he can no longer bask in his past glory, Powers takes to listening to self-help tapes that he wrote himself (with abundant encouraging expletives). He also returns to his home town of Shelby County, North Carolina, and accidentally falls into the job of gym teacher at the local school.

Powers' fall from grace has, of course, been his own fault. He has all the traits required to turn an immature, arrogant, overweight loser into a target for black comedy. He is coarse, crude, disrespectful, irresponsible, inclined to drink and drugs and lazy to an exaggerated degree (he probably smells and wears white sleeveless t-shirts, too, but let's give the guy a break). Given these remarkable traits, it's no wonder that no pro baseball team wants him on their books. No-one else wants much to do with him either, except his poor brother Dustin, who suffers the lazy lout crashing on his couch only because it's his sibling.

Kenny Powers is played by Danny McBride, who is no stranger to adult humour; his film roles include Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Hot Rod and The Heartbreak Kid. Lest he be written off by those with conservative tastes, though, it is only fair to point out that he is also going to be in Land of the Lost with none other than Will Ferrell. Perhaps it is no credit to him that he suits the role of Powers very well (presumably because he is a good actor rather than a total jackass in real life).

McBride is joined in the regular cast by John Hawkes, who plays Kenny's brother Dustin. Dustin is no white knight, but at least he is grown-up enough to have a family. Kenny is not a welcome addition to his household, not least because he shouts at Dustin's kids for touching his jet ski and encourages them to make fun of anyone who is socially awkward or disadvantaged. Hawkes is also natural in his role, which mostly involves expressing exasperation and mollifying his wife Cassie (Jennifer Irwin), who is horrified at the effect Kenny is having on her children.

It is almost inevitable in a show like Eastbound and Down that our (anti-)hero will also find that the girl of his dreams is engaged to someone better spoken and at a higher intellectual level than he is. Cue an excellent turn by MADtv (and Saturday Night) alumnus Andrew Daly as semi-dweeb school teacher Terrence Cutler. Whereas most such characters have disdain for their less sophisticated competitor, however, Cutler regards Powers as a baseball hero and dotes on him even as Powers is courting his fiancée April (Katy Mixon).

Kenny Powers is essentially a live-action version of Cartman from South Park. Concomitantly Eastbound and Down is likely to appeal to anyone who laughed at the South Park Movie. One difference between South Park and Eastbound, though, is that the former crosses the line in the interests of satire. Eastbound has no such pretensions. The extent to which Powers is funny will depend on the degree to which you find amusement in humour that is about as crude as you can get. As the success of Trailer Park Boys or the hilarious British character Alan Partridge shows, ignorance can be hilarious when taken to ridiculous extremes. Ridiculous is certainly the word for Kenny Powers and accordingly I found the first half of Chapter One of Eastbound and Down to be a guilty pleasure. Once Powers and his friend started snorting cocaine, though, his character - and the show - became less appealing. Call me prudish, but I think that making the results of sniffing hard drugs seem funny is socially irresponsible. I'm not sure if it was this incident that made the difference, but thereafter I found myself laughing less at Eastbound and Down's over-the-top offensiveness.

If you've a liking for bad taste humour, Eastbound and Down will fit the bill. No doubtl it would be especially funny over an extra large pizza and a few too many beers. The longevity of a show like this for a sober audience, though, depends on character development. Kenny Powers isn't charming, sympathetic or very original, so he's a character who could get tiresome rapidly.  There is really only one way that he can develop and that's towards redemption. For a brief period towards the end of Chapter One it looks as though that might be the way the series is heading. The brief moment of humility Powers expresses, however, is merely a precursor to him rediscovering the arrogance that got him into trouble in the first place. He becomes a man with a mission to recapture his fame. Yet, while he is no longer lazy, he is still ignorant. Unless there is more to his character than that his career as a comic figure may be as short lived as his heroics in Major League Baseball.