MTV2 gives shock comedy new name

It looks and sounds a lot like a children’s TV show, with cute kids, adorable hand puppets and lessons to be learned.

But the lessons the new MTV2 comedy series “Wonder Showzen” teaches are things like “Danger can be fun,” “Imagination can lead to a terrible fate” and love is a “neurochemical con job.”

“South Park” had better watch out. “Wonder Showzen” has raised the bar on shock comedy.

In the first few episodes, one of the hand puppets does the wild thing with a toothless drifter, Mother Nature has a sex change, and the Supreme Being is turned into barbecue.

“Our mission statement is to kill civilization,” said the show’s co-creator John Lee.

So far he and partner Vernon Chatman have only succeeded in causing snorts of perverse laughter from those who tune in.

“Wonder Showzen” weaves together animated segments, children’s educational reels, industrial films and theater-of-the-absurd flourishes. Together, they creates an improbable mix of “Avenue Q,” R. Crumb and Samuel Beckett.

Toilet jokes sit next to existential entreaties, or political outbursts. In one segment, a 6-year-old confronts a stunned Wall Street broker with: “Who did you exploit today?”

“The show assaults you on so many levels,” said MTV honcho Tom Calderone, the show’s executive producer. “(But) the only comment we’ve had from viewers is that they’ve never seen anything like it. We haven’t had complaints.”

Chatman is crushed.

“We were so hoping the world would be offended,” he said.

The pair has a track record in alarming comedy. Chatman and Lee have written for “South Park” and “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.” They’ve also penned Snoop Dogg’s series on MTV.

They shopped “Wonder Showzen” to the USA Network, but Lee said “within five minutes, they stopped the tape and told us we were the killers of comedy.”

Only MTV would take it on. “Their gizzards are rock-hard,” Lee said.

Even so, they put it on the edgier, smaller MTV2 – a channel that Lee likened to “a giant tree falling in the forest.”

The program comes with a disclaimer at the start that reads: “Contains offensive, despicable content that is far too controversial – and too awesome – for children. If you allow a child to watch this show, you are a bad parent.”

Some parents of kids who’ve appeared on the program still can’t resist showing it to their children.

“One mother told us that when it gets to the offensive parts, she tickles her son,” Chatman said. “That is so sick. That kid will probably grow up to be just like us.”