Comedy Central has tapped directly into my soul with their new half hour show, Another Period. This show satirizes reality shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians and period dramas (especially Downton Abbey) by placing a turn of the century rich family in Newport (The Bellacourts) under a reality show microscope. We get candid interviews with family members, confessionals from the much-trodden-upon servants, and footage of all the exciting events upstairs and downstairs. Of course everyone is keen to air their secrets in front of the camera and scandals abound.

The pilot of Another Period is tasteless and crude and sort of mean and I laughed my ass off at it. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to review because I’d really just like to quote all the lines from the pilot. Not only would this spoil the pilot but also much of what makes the lines funny is the comedic delivery with which the lines are uttered, like the utterly daffy way in which the husbands gather their swimsuits and picnic baskets and announce that they are off to war, to the puzzlement of their wives who ask, “Which one? Is it the poor people one? Or the potato one?”

In the pilot episode, the Bellacourt sisters, played by Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome, are desperate to impress The Marquis de Sainsbury, who is the head of a prestigious social group. Turns out they have a third sister (played by the hilariously venomous Artemis Pebdani) who is determined to steal their thunder by inviting Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan to the gathering. Once the family breaks out the cocaine wine (explaining to Helen and Anne, who belong to the Temperance Movement, that they can drink the wine because it’s mostly just cocaine), things go from witty to insanely slapstick and then back to witty.

Meanwhile, Christina Hendricks shows up as a new maid, Celine (promptly renamed “Chair” by her new employers, to her intense, eye-rolling disgust). As she meets the staff and gets to know her duties, which include “winding the clock, exercising the swans, bloodletting, ghost removal,” we’re treated to some absolutely spot on wicked commentary on how absolutely wretched servants’ lives actually were. “I enjoy Mr. Fredrick’s bath time,” his manservant explains, wistfully. “Of course, it’s Mr. Fredrick’s bath time, but it’s sort of my bath time too. I get to wash my hands.”

The cast includes Paget Brewster, Jason Ritter, and Beth Dover. Beth Dover plays Blanche, a maid who has just returned from an asylum. She was diagnosed with hysteria, and who tends to abruptly start screaming. “We have a lot of fun with her,” comments Mr. Peepers, the butler, played by Michael Ian Black.

I have no idea whether this show can sustain itself for ten episodes, even ten short episodes, given that it’s really one joke (rich people are horrible). But it satirizes period drama so very well that I’m pretty sure I’ll still be laughing ten episodes from now. It airs on Comedy Central on Tuesdays at 10:30E/9:30C, and on Hulu Plus. You can also watch episodes online on the Comedy Central website. Like Peepers, I plan to have a lot of fun with it.