Alyson Hannigan

`How’-to manual: Deliver the laughs and the viewers will stay, say stars of hit CBS sitcom

It might seem like an obvious concept for a sitcom, but it’s one that often gets overlooked.

``It’s all about the funny,’’ says Neil Patrick Harris of his new hit sitcom ``How I Met Your Mother’’ (tonight at 8:30 on WBZ, Ch. 4).

The CBS half-hour follows the misadventures of 27-year-old Ted (Josh Radnor) as he searches for Ms. Right with the help of engaged college friends Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan), horny best buddy Barney (Harris) and Robin (Cobie Smulders), a woman who, we learned in the pilot, is not the one.

The series is narrated by ``Full House’’ vet Bob Saget as the more mature Ted, who tells the story via flashbacks to his adolescent children in the year 2030. ``How’’ has performed so well, CBS picked it up last week for a full season.

Hannigan, best known for playing witchy Willow on ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer’’ for seven years and band camper Michelle in the ``American Pie’’ trilogy, had been in talks with several networks about doing a sitcom. ``I never wanted to be on `The Alyson Hannigan Show,’ ’’ she says of the decision to do an ensemble comedy. ``That just didn’t appeal to me. I just wanted to be with funny people.’’

This is the first bona fide hit for Segel, late of the critically acclaimed but short-lived series’ ``Freaks and Geeks’’ and ``Undeclared.’’ ``The script got better and better every time it got rewritten,’’ he says of the pilot. ``It’s been pretty amazing so far.’’

Harris, on the other hand wasn’t interested in a sitcom.

``I was hellbent against it, initially,’’ says the actor who got his big break as the teen doctor ``Doogie Howser, M.D.’’ ``I was burned out on that `Stark Raving Mad’ show we did,’’ he says of the regrettable late 1999 sitcom co-starring ``Monk’s’’ Tony Shalhoub that was trounced by ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’’

``But then this script came along and the character is really fun,’’ he says of toxic bachelor Barney, who helps Ted meet women by approaching them at bars and asking simply ``Have you met Ted?’’ before scurrying away.

Accustomed to playing the ``average’’ guy, Harris relishes Barney’s outlandish behavior, including his constant directive to ``Suit up!’’

``It’s fun to be the wacky guy around the protagonist because you get fun punch lines and you get more extreme things to do.’’

Series creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays say they cast Harris in part because of his wickedly funny cameo in the stoner flick ``Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.’’

Harris almost passed on that film, in which he plays a debauched version of himself, snorting cocaine and carousing with hookers. He’s now grateful for what it accomplished.

``I worked for two days on the movie and it, image-wise, has shaken things up a lot.’’

None of the actors are in any hurry to meet the woman who will eventually become Ted’s wife, stressing that the journey is where all of the funny lies.

``I don’t think that question has to really even be answered right away,’’ says Harris.

``Yeah,’’ Hannigan says. ``You never found out who the boss really was on `Who’s the Boss?’ ’’