Oct 17, 2013 2 min read

Sketch comedy has long been a television staple, from “The Carol Burnett Show,” to “Saturday Night Live,” “The Kids in the Hall,” “In Living Color” and, more recently, “Key & Peele.”

There’s sketch comedy, though, and there’s sketch comedy. The kind of comedy practiced by groups like Upright Citizens Brigade and Killing My Lobster, for example, is a harder fit for TV because it tends to be edgier, less polished and, more dangerous.

“The Birthday Boys” got their start with Upright Citizens Brigade and now, with the help of executive producers Bob Odenkirk and Ben Stiller, they bring their craziness to the IFC channel (10:30 p.m. today).

Odenkirk is a participant in some sketches, but he mostly leaves the hilarity to the seven aging “Boys,” Jefferson Dutton, Matt Kowalick, Mike Mitchell, Mike Hanford, Tim Kalpakis, Dave Ferguson and Chris VanArtsdalen.

Tonight’s premiere is titled “Paychecks,” but that only references one joke at the end of the half hour. Before then, the boys portray the pioneers of Silicon Valley – sort of. Like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, they unleash their genius in a garage. It wasn’t in Palo Alto, but in Los Gatos. And they didn’t invent the computer: They invented the garage. Seriously. OK, well, not seriously, but they did invent a keyboard: a board where they all could hang their keys.

The episodes are anything but episodic. The garage bit runs in and out of the premiere show, but there are other bits as well, including Odenkirk impersonating a tech god, a la the late Steve Jobs.

This is not sophisticated humor. It’s closest to what they used to call college humor, and what is now considered stoned humor.