'Happyish' takes the fun out of whining

It's possible TV has overrated the comic potential of whining.

That angst has always been a wellspring of art is a given. Laughing through pain, cursing the darkness, searching for the light: Those are efforts worth celebrating and exploring. It's that constant hum of a woe-is-me whine; that incessant probing of the low-level pain of the over-privileged; that seemingly endless search for some complaint-worthy problem in an otherwise blessed existence that's grown tiresome.

And goodness, is Happyish tiresome (Sunday, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, *½ out of four).

The title stems in part from an inability by ad executive Thom Payne (Steve Coogan, who replaced the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) to appreciate his life — an idea explored far more cogently and amusingly in Postcards from the Edge — and in part from his belief that Thomas Jefferson sold us a bill of goods with the whole "pursuit of happiness" thing. Thom believes happiness is an unattainable myth, and his artsy, aggravating series does its best to prove him right.

While Thom takes little pleasure in advertising, the job's been good to him — or it had been until two new, young bosses start talking about social media and opportunities for disruption. They cause Thom to panic, visualized by animated flights of fancy featuring homicidal Keebler elves and indignant Geico geckos.

At work, he's encouraged by his boss (Bradley Whitford) to rebrand himself, and told by his headhunter (Ellen Barkin) to accept his low joy ceiling). At home, he's gently chided by his wife, Lee (Kathryn Hahn), who has her own issues with her mother (and with Dora the Explorer).

Creator Shalom Auslander has gathered a great cast and found a ripe target for satire in modern corporate America (a target Silicon Valley hits more often and more cleanly). But this show just seems so enchanted by its own cleverness, from the riffs on vaginal surgery to the references to Nabokov and Chagall, that you end up exhausted. You may find yourself yearning for just one conversation you think a human being might actually have — or one that isn't built around sexual organs, sex or the popular four-letter word for it.

Ultimately, even if you think Thom has something to complain about, haven't we already heard those complaints ad nauseam? If Showtime or some other outlet wants to do a new comedy about a poor, smiling-through-their-pain, inner-city family — a Good Times sequel rather than Full House — sign me up. But a prosperous, middle-aged ad exec with a lovely wife and a bright, healthy child? Sorry, but if you want me to think his inability to find joy is worthy of my weekly time, you're going to have to do a lot better job of convincing me than Happyish does.

And if that's whining, so be it.