Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's frequently brilliant cartoon Futurama is officially back on the air thanks to a long, if shaky, deal between owner 20th Century Fox and the show's new home, Comedy Central. Futurama originally died the death of many excellent TV shows that cross Fox's fickle path. Instead of originally being given a perfect time slot following Groening's unkillable Simpsons on Sunday nights, it was tossed around to various unflattering spots, including a counter-intuitive Tuesday night airing, until it finally petered out by the end of its fourth season. It's not likely it would have lasted even that long had Fox's animation golden boy not fought for it. In the years following its cancellation, Futurama found a devoted cult in the 20-somethings who originally loved it as teens. The series enjoyed a long period of syndication on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup and later on Comedy Central, where it would eventually find a second life. For the past couple years Groening and company have capitalized on Futurama's devoted fanbase by making a few straight-to-video movies, The Beast With A Billion Backs, Bender's Big Score, Bender's Game and Into The Wild Green Yonder. While not smash hits, the movies were successful enough to convince Comedy Central to give Futurama a new season of 26 episodes, two of which aired tonight. So, are the things that made the original series great still intact?

For the most part, yes. Unlike The Simpsons, Futurama was designed to be a non-stop satire machine from the beginning. A lot of its humor came from picking apart elements of American society both past and present, with the rest relying on the show's creative sense of outright absurdity. In the double-stacked premiere there are a few really keen comic moments that manage to capture the feel of the original series as if it had never been canceled, which is exactly what the new series is going for. Thankfully the entire original voice cast is present, so it's a bit easier to imagine it's 2004.

One noticeable difference in the new series is that the animation quality has dropped slightly. There isn't nearly as much background detail and the character movements are generally simpler. It's easy to tell that Futurama 2.0 has a lower budget and smaller staff. This isn't terribly distracting, but it is a reminder that the series has been uprooted and transplanted to basic cable.

The first new episode, "Rebirth", is the weaker half of the premiere. This is mostly due to the episode's obligation to reintroduce the cast and assure returning viewers that all the essential bits and pieces are still there. The plot involves a horrible space ship crash that nearly killed the entire Planet Express crew and Dr. Farnsworth's attempts to revive them all with a giant vat of stem cells. The writing for this episode feels generally rusty, as if the reduced staff forgot a lot of the subtleties of their characters. If the entire new series came out the same, I'd say it was a mistake to revive it.

The second episode, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela", fares a lot better. A mysterious space craft goes around destroying whole planets with Earth in its crosshairs next. Leela is forced to team up with Zapp Brannigan to save the world, but their efforts take a hard left turn into snarky biblical allegory before long. The most striking thing about this episode is that it demonstrates Futurama's inevitable transformation into a slightly more adult-themed program now that it's on Comedy Central. There are a lot more sex jokes and instances of bare cartoon skin in the episode. Time will tell if this development will be gracefully integrated into the show or if it will effectively ruin it the way a similar shift destroyed the disastrous Ren and Stimpy reboot on Spike.

There's a lot to like about the revived Futurama and so far it seems to be shaking off the seven years of rust it has accumulated since Fox canceled it. I'll tentatively recommend it for fans of the original series, but if you never caught any of the first four seasons of the show you'll probably enjoy this new run better after you do a little DVD-aided homework.