Entertainment

Paws & effect

Everyone who has ever had a dog who was actually a human with fur, raise your hand.

OK, that makes everyone except that guy in the back row there. Sorry, sir, cats don’t count.

A human dog is exactly what out-of-work loser and suicidal lawyer Ryan has on his hands in FX’s new, very high — in most senses of the word — concept comedy, “Wilfred.”

It’s about a man, a girl and a dog that’s a man.

Elijah Wood — who is, of course, no stranger to strange human forms (“Lord of the Rings”) — is Ryan, who we meet at home alone, downing an entire bottle of pills that his exasperated doctor sister, Kristen (Dorian Brown), has prescribed.

Instead of dying, however, Ryan gets crazy-hyper and can’t sleep.

The next morning, when his new neighbor, Jenna (Fiona Gubelmann), shows up asking if he can watch her dog, Wilfred, for a few hours, he agrees.

He can’t actually say no because he’s gone wacko and doesn’t see Wilfred (Jason Gann) as a canine — but as a surly Aussie man in a very bad dog costume. And the surly dog-man is insisting that they spend the day together.

Is Wilfred a dog or a man? Has Ryan simply overdosed and started hallucinating? Or is he actually dead from an OD and this is some sort of man-dog hell?

Turns out that Ryan’s sister only prescribed sugar pills for him, because she knew he’s such a loser that he’d overdose on the real stuff.

So what the hell is going on?

Your guess is as good as mine.

At first, I hated the series, thinking it was all actor artsy, you know, something in which Johnny Depp should be starring.

But then, I started laughing out loud.

I mean, who doesn’t like a dog with a bong who swills liquor and gets revenge on the horrible neighbor with the Harley by whizzing in his shoes? Forget Megan Fox, this dog is every man’s fantasy.

And that is especially true for Ryan because Wilfred is everything Ryan is not — brave, insulting, a fighter, a breaking-and-entering, very bad man-dog.

While the rest of the world sees Wilfred as a dog, only Ryan sees him as a man in a dog suit. You will howl when Wilfred goes up to every woman on the street and smells, licks and paws indiscriminately.

And, for all of us who know what our dogs are thinking, Wilfred confirms that yes, they are that bad.

Wood’s puppy-dog eyes and Gann’s crazy dog persona — or is that dogsona? — are a few things that make “Wilfred” watchable, in an existential-Johnny Depp-meets-“Monty Python” kind of way, that is.