In Superjail!'s defence, I think it would work a lot better if it went straight to DVD. The “style” of the show does not lend itself to “casual” viewing- a lot happens and if you stumble across it (as I did, when my brother said “Hey, you’ve got to watch this!”), your first reaction is almost certainly going to be “What the fuck is this???”
Once you watch a couple of episodes and start to get a better idea of the show’s style (which, IMHO, is visually extremely creative), it starts to make a become a lot more watchable. In other words, it’s easier to get into if you’ve got all the episodes on DVD to watch together, instead of seeing 10 minutes here and there on TV.
I took me about three episodes to finally understand the concept behind the whole show, FWIW.
I’m watching it right now and it’s freakin’ awesome. However, I do wonder if it will lose something in translation - the episodes are a pisstake of ITV’s and BBC’s Television for Schools, which every kid living in the UK had to watch for school in the 1970s-1980s. They have the look down perfectly - from the grainy film, exhortation to “take out your red pens,” and even the countdown timer.
The second series will translate much better - it’s a pisstake of the long-running series “Tomorrow’s World,” complete with perky presenters and bizarro “technology of the future” demonstrations. Peter Serafinowicz is one of the writers (and main host), who was the voice of Darth Maul… if there is any justice in this world, the Peter Serafinowicz Show will air in America and my fellow Yanks can piss themselves watching Darth Vader ask out a pink mask wearing lookalike…
I was able to recognize it pretty easily as BBC programming that aired on PBS after school from when I was a kid. It did probably lose something but I knew what they were after.