At Home with Amy Sedaris

Sedaris remains, as ever, hilarious, inventive, unbalanced and deeply, joyously, shamelessly twisted. Her new show’s not bad either. ... At Home With Amy Sedaris is each of those [“The Frugal Gourmet,” “Barefoot Contessa,” “Paula’s Home Cooking” and “30 Minute Meals”], on acid.

Inexplicable idiosyncrasies are delightful, and they stack up quickly to make for a mind-boggling half-hour of television with one surprise after another. But “At Home” is only as engaging as you allow it to be. There’s not enough of a serialized through-line to pull you from episode to episode in a brain-consuming binge, nor does Sedaris request her viewers invest in the many characters who come dancing through. “At Home” is light entertainment.

Sedaris has an earnest desire to share her unique brand of hospitality. What she mixes up here is cozy and kooky, with a side of depravity.

Sedaris attacks every alter ego with the vanity-free, game-for-anything spirit of Carol Burnett, and facial expressions as malleable as silly putty. ... The main selling point of At Home With Amy Sedaris is that it’s just plain strange as hell. Strangeness sparks its own kind of joy.

A disturbing and delicious beast, a sendup of TV home shows that draws on Ms. Sedaris’s sunshiny comic versatility to explore the dark oddities in the back of the spice cabinet.

Sedaris plays crazy better than anyone. At Home is right in her wheelhouse. It manages to send-up the trivial and make it oh-so-important.

As an overall package, At Home With Amy Sedaris is a gleeful hodgepodge of silly jokes, talk show satire, and bubbly innuendo delivered with the gusto of a host who refuses to have anything less than an amazing time. It’s fun, it’s wacky, it’s everything Sedaris does best in one Technicolor package.