Jane Espenson

With a Couch Potato’s Style, Private Eye Works the Mall

He went to peddle his lovability elsewhere: in supporting roles, as in “Talladega Nights,” and front and center, as in “Andy Richter Controls the Universe.” It seems he wanted to be in the big chair himself, and from afar Mr. O’Brien’s fondness never wavered.

Like Don Knotts, Mr. Richter is one of those rare performers whom other comics like to share a stage with, help out and forgive for almost anything. But audiences are different from performers: they have a martial idea of rank. You don’t go from sidekick to frontman easily. Mr. Richter is soft, friendly, affable. He’s supposed to listen and laugh as much as he talks and jokes.

Still, Mr. O’Brien and Jonathan Groff, a onetime head writer for “Late Night,” are positive that their honey deserves another shot in a title role. And they’re correct to take the chance. Some shows, the ones short on snickers and put-downs (those are for Jimmy Kimmel), actually require a good-natured, rosily complexioned and hefty lead. Witness Kevin James on “The King of Queens.”

Tonight Mr. Richter opens in “Andy Barker, P.I.,” a heavily plotted crime show that’s meant to evoke the 1970s - not just with its hat tips to TV of the period, but with its cocktail-culture drollery. Mr. Richter plays Andy Barker, an accountant in a Los Angeles exurb, who appears at first to be living a hollow existence in which high pleasure is afforded by “Judging Amy” on TiVo. On greater exposure the Barker life looks like fun.

Andy’s office, in a big-box mall called Fair Oaks Plaza, is spacious and icy-clean in the way of early-’90s stylized set design (think Hal Hartley). The plaza also allows for sociability with the downstairs neighbor, Simon (Tony Hale), a jivey video store owner whose obsolete livelihood means that he has time on his hands. Together they get drawn into a classic noir plot in tonight’s episode, and Andy turns out to have a knack for solving crimes.

Further supported by a codger detective, Lew Staziak (the movie veteran Harve Presnell), and a patriotic restaurateur, Wally (Marshall Manesh), Andy hangs a private-eye shingle, and a franchise is born. The second episode introduces a new crime, including the mystery of an obese man’s sex appeal.

Part of what’s satisfying about “Andy Barker” is that it answers a truly urgent historical question: What would Jake Gittes, Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade have done with Google? Often Andy turns to the old Internet when he wants to find a fact or a fugitive, and the camera is not shy with its shots of the computer screen.

The show is surprisingly beautiful - if you came across it while flipping channels, you’d think it was a movie - and that adds to its platinum-card sheen. NBC has lately become a network for the rich, which would be nauseating except that sometimes “upscale” also means “good.”

This peculiar series seals NBC’s new role as the skinflint’s HBO. The shows “30 Rock,” “Friday Night Lights” and now “Andy Barker, P.I.” are all so engrossing and so creatively untrammeled that it’s almost suspicious. Have the rules of network TV changed? Does no one need to make money anymore?

We may be in a golden age. Watch these shows while you still can, meaning now. This not being the 1970s, all six episodes of “Andy Barker, P.I.” are already available, all the time, on nbc.com.

ANDY BARKER, P.I.

NBC, tonight at 9:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 8:30, Central time.

Created by Conan O’Brien and Jonathan Groff, series executive producers with Jeff Ross and David Kissinger; Jason Ensler, director; Peter Schindler and Chuck Tatham, co-executive producers; Andy Richter, producer; Josh Bycel, Jane Espenson, Alex Herschlag, Gail Lerner, Gregg Mettler and Jon Pollack, consulting producers; Mr. O’Brien, Jonathan Groff and Jon Ross, writers; Daniel Hsia, staff writer. A NBC Universal Television Studio and Conaco production.

WITH: Andy Richter (Andy Barker), Clea Lewis (Jenny Barker), Tony Hale (Simon), Harve Presnell (Lew Staziak) and Marshall Manesh (Wally).