Cool "Clone Wars" series on Cartoon Network

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"Star Wars: The Clone Wars" is a very cool weekly cartoon series from Lucasfilm Animation that finds a fresh new style for depicting the struggle of the Jedi and their army of genetically engineered clones against the seemingly indomitable droid army of Separatists.

It's Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Ahsoka Tano and other Star Wars heroes pitted against the evil Count Dooku, his assassin Asajj Ventress, their master Darth Sidious, the mechanical General Grievous and assorted other villains.

This season's 22-episode saga premieres at 9 p.m. Friday on Cartoon Network with back-to-back half-hours. (It was introduced in theaters last month with a feature-film version.)

HBO weighs in with a pair of oddball comedies tonight.

At 10:30 p.m., "Little Britain USA" imports the chameleonic Matt Lucas and David Walliams to America in a Yank version of their no-holds-barred British sketch-comedy hit. Characters embodied by this twisted twosome include Bing Gordyn, the little-known eighth astronaut to go to the moon, and Phyllis, who can't help obeying the demented demands from her King Charles. There's bad taste and outrageousness galore, and even more laughs.

Then at 11 p.m., "The Life & Times of Tim" explores the wrongheaded world of a young office drudge with terminal passivity. The animation style on "Tim" is sufficiently bare-bones to make "South Park" look like "Shrek" screened at an Imax. Created by adman-filmmaker Steve Dildarian, it's cringingly hilarious.

"Taxi to the Dark Side" is a wrenching documentary with heavy relevance for Election Year 2008 and beyond. The title refers to an innocent young Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who was killed while being held in Bagram prison in 2002. And it refers to a statement from Vice President Dick Cheney a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks: "We also have to work the dark side, if you will," he said, describing U.S. strategy for bringing terrorists to justice. The film examines highly questionable interrogation practices used by U.S. military guards on prisoners in Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Written, produced, directed and narrated by Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"), "Taxi to the Dark Side" won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and a 2007 Peabody Award, among its many honors. It premieres at 9 p.m. Monday on HBO.