Let's "Playhouse"

There’s an unmistakable irony in that “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,� which began life as a children’s program on CBS two decades ago, now finds itself an offering on Adult Swim (at 11 tonight), the late-night anarchic version of Cartoon Network.

While it’s vaguely amusing to consider what the CBS suits must’ve made of the bizarre, inspired show back in 1986, it’s even more tantalizing to consider what a broadcast network would make of this material today. In today's TV climate, this is risky TV to be put on cable late at night; back then, it won 22 Emmys.

I feared it might feel dated before watching the first episode, but the show, gratifyingly, has lost none of its surreal delight. A perverse amalgam of slightly sinister puppets, goofy clay-mation, bizarre vintage cartoons (the show’s archival department must’ve been patient and ingenious in searching for these things) that seemed to have been the product of hop-headed animators’ fever dreams, eccentric characters (co-stars included Laurence Fishburne, S. Epatha Merkerson, Phil Hartman and Natasha Lyonne) and free-associative plotting that verged on the Dadaist, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse� is an enduring cult classic.

And, of course, don’t forget the contribution of Paul Reubens, whose Pee-wee was an innocent perpetually winking bemusedly to his audience yet somehow genuinely filled with affection for what he was doing. His spastic body language and skewed vocal intonations (he’d fill down time with a passive-aggressive “La-LAA-la, la-la-LA�) made him a favorite of kids and adults alike (perhaps not so much the parents trying to sleep in on Saturdays whose kids were encouraged to “scream real loud� when the magic word was said, and it was said a lot).

“Pee-wee’s Playhouse� predated MTV2’s far more savage “Wonder Showzen� by employing kids in delivering its don’t-toe-any-line message (“Wonder Showzen� is merely a virulent parody of children’s shows; “Pee-wee� was both a legitimate children’s show and a parody). And it won all those Emmys even though it only produced 45 episodes, but that, of course, was before Reubens ventured into a Florida movie theater with Pee-wee's plaything.