Big Time in Hollywood, FL Serves Up a Whole Lot of Crazy (SPRING PREVIEW)

Accidental murder. An international drug cartel. Cuba Gooding Jr. in a banana hammock. Welcome to the strange terrain of Big Time in Hollywood, FL, a new scripted comedy from executive producer Ben Stiller. In the opener, Jack and Ben–loser-ish twentysomething brothers and aspiring filmmakers played by cocreator Alex Anfanger and Lenny Jacobson–are unwittingly responsible for the death of an actor posing as a drug lord (Stiller, sporting an awesome fake goatee). And it only gets more convoluted from there.

“Believe me, the pitch for this show was an hour long,” says ­Anfanger, citing influences that range from The Usual Suspects to Eastbound & Down. “It all exists in this semi-heightened world, and there’s so much weaving together of different genres and storylines.”

Among them? To avoid getting booted from the nest by their fed-up parents (Kathy Baker and Stephen Tobolowsky), the guys pretend to have a drug problem. (In rehab, they meet Gooding Jr., playing a fictionalized addict version of himself.) “We certainly wouldn’t compare this to Breaking Bad–just the most amazing show–but it does have that style of ‘I can’t believe this leads to that,’ ” Jacobson says. “When you look back at the finale, you won’t believe everything that’s happened in such a short period of time.”

Big Time in Hollywood, FL, Premieres Wednesday, March 25, 10:30/9:30c, Comedy Central