Elijah Wood going to the dogs in quirky 'Wilfred'

In a television landscape littered with surgically enhanced shrews screeching at one another and off-key singers who think they're as talented as their parents say, it's startling to find a scripted show that makes viewers think about the theater of the absurd. Yet Ionesco would probably be amused if he watched “Wilfred,” premiering Thursday, June 23, on FX.

The quirky show has Elijah Wood (the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy) in his first starring role in a series. He plays Ryan, a depressed lawyer and the only person who sees Wilfred as a man (Jason Gann) in a dog suit. Everyone else sees Wilfred as an actual dog.

“What fascinated me is the element of who Ryan is,” Wood says. “Ryan is at a precipice for change. He gets to a point where he can't go any farther. There's an extreme potential for a sharp turn left or right, and that's what Wilfred represents to him.”

There isn't much like “Wilfred.” Expect comparisons to “Harvey” and “Donnie Darko,” though neither quite fits. Jimmy Stewart may have been touched in “Harvey,” but he wasn't crude. And the scary rabbit in “Donnie Darko” wasn't a fun creature.

The pilot opens with Ryan rewriting his suicide note three times, making a healthy shake, into which he upends a bottle of prescription pills, and taking to bed to die. Then he's struck with a revision to the suicide note and stops to gaze longingly and wave at his hot neighbor. Death does not come, quietly or otherwise, but then again, it wouldn't be much of a series if it did.

And this is as good a time as any to warn children, viewers with delicate sensibilities, or anyone uncomfortable with sex and drugs that this is not appropriate. For those who appreciate the randy and the bizarre, it's hilarious.

Wilfred smokes pot, has relations with stuffed animals and acts like a dog, albeit a dog without the usual optimism. This show, an American version of an Australian cult hit, is indeed the result of a hazy night 10 years ago and a discussion about a dog that terrorized its owner's boyfriends.

“And I just started improvising as this dog,” Gann says. “And it wasn't a concept. It was just funny, and Adam Zwar, the original co-creator with myself, we just said, ‘That's a short film, baby. We gotta write that down.' So we wrote down a seven-minute short, and a week later we shot it. Within a year, it was at Sundance, and it's just a bad joke that's gone too far.”

The FX American version is different from the Australian version, he says. “It's slicker,” Gann says. “It's the show that I wanted to make. I wouldn't have done a new version of ‘Wilfred' had I not thought that it could be better.”

Wilfred is the dog of the pretty neighbor, Jenna (Fiona Gubelmann). When Ryan opens the door to meet Jenna, looking as if he may have died and come back as a zombie, she asks if she could get him something, juice or “medical attention.” Jenna asks Ryan if Wilfred can stay with him while an exterminator is in her house. Once Ryan allows Wilfred in, Ryan's life must change.

“You don't know why Wilfred is there,” Wood says. “It could be for his detriment, or it could be a positive thing as well. It's getting Ryan out of himself.”

Ryan's sister, Kristen (Dorian Brown), is an obstetrician who is trying to run his life. Their dad had pushed Ryan into becoming a lawyer, and we don't know yet what pushed Ryan over the edge.

Wood recalls reading the script for the first time.

“I thought it was so hilarious and so unlike anything I'd ever read and anything I could imagine seeing on television,” he says.

“I just became so excited at the prospect of what we could do with this world and with these two characters and the places that we could explore,” Wood says. “So that was it. I essentially just fell in love with the project and went in and met with Jason, and we read. You know, for me it was also a wonderful opportunity to do something I had never really had the opportunity to do before, to work in the realm of comedy.”

All Wood wants, he says, is “that it remains interesting, funny and maintains its level of integrity. Whether that's for one season or four doesn't matter to me.”

<b>“Wilfred”</b>

Debuts 9 p.m. Thursday, June 23, on FX