Fall TV preview: Robin Williams, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ‘The Crazy Ones’ is hilarious

It is probably fair to say that before “The Crazy Ones” was ordered by CBS, we were already ready to welcome it as a brilliant slice of TV comedy. Robin Williams is one of the three or four actors who we could watch do just about anything and be entertained, at least if zany, off-the-wall comedy is your cup of tea.

Now, Williams is back for his first major comedy role since first finding fame in the genre decades ago, and it’s a big one. The network has so much faith in this show that they are handing it the 9:00 p.m. Thursday time-slot on a silver platter, and actually using “Two and a Half Men” as a follow-up to it. As great as Robin is, we also cannot ignore the presence of Sarah Michelle Gellar and her “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” following.

The story here is super-simple: Williams and Gellar’s characters are a father-daughter team that operates the Roberts & Roberts ad agency, whose goal is to sell products while apparently being insane most of the time. Robin’s Simon is basically the genius of Don Draper with the goofiness of Michael Scott: A good combination, and perfect for him. It also makes sense for Gellar’s character to be the straight-laced one of the two.

The video below gives you a sense of what the first story is (a campaign for McDonald’s), and it is hilarious. You have a number of risks, James Wolk hopefully getting a chance to have a show stick around, and a guest appearance from “American Idol” champ Kelly Clarkson performing a song suspiciously about a different kind of “meat” in an effort to change her image.

In the end, we still don’t know if all of this will be enough to make “The Crazy Ones” drive CBS viewers crazy. This is not a network with success in single-camera comedy, and while we’d pencil this in now for four seasons on ABC, NBC, or Fox, it’s still a question mark here given that it lacks the familiar format.