“That one is cursed,” a salesman remarks, breezily, as he finalizes the sale of a stone-framed mirror topped by a brooding gargoyle. “I’m just letting you know, because some people don’t like that.”

His customer, the magnificently fey Andrés (Julio Torres)—an orphan who was abandoned at a convent, then adopted by wealthy chocolatiers, and who wears an air of moody entitlement so aggressive that it might make a Romanov insecure—seems unconcerned. Andrés is, after all, a proud member of Los Espookys, the entrepreneurial “horror group” at the heart of the silly and satisfying new HBO show of the same name, created by and starring Fred Armisen, the comedian Ana Fabrega, and Torres, a “Saturday Night Live” writer. As far as the group is concerned, a curse may be value added.

Performed in a blend of Spanish and English (with subtitles translating each to the other), and set in an unnamed Latin-American city, the series follows four layabout horror fans—Andrés; the goth makeup artist Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco); and two sisters, the coolly pragmatic Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti) and the odd Tati (Fabrega)—who launch a business staging supernatural events. Using special effects, they rig up a fake exorcism, to boost the reputation of an insecure priest; stage a “standard inheritance scare,” involving a haunted house; and pose as space aliens, to help a scientist. Their artistry is a source of shared pride and passionate debate. “Let’s keep it simple and do something classic,” Renaldo says, after Andrés pitches a risky plan for the haunted house. “Like hands under the bed or blood dripping from the walls.”

“Look, I hear what you’re saying,” Andrés replies, deadpan. “And it makes perfect sense. But I’ll keep insisting on this idea as if I never heard you.”

In their D.I.Y. gameness, Los Espookys reminded me of a recent viral story about a high-school drama club in New Jersey that, on a tiny budget, staged a meticulous reënactment of “Alien,” using nothing but trash and imagination. (Google the video! It’s solid.) But the show’s appeal lies less in its plot than in its off-kilter insouciance. “Loving someone means muting their flaws for two to five years,” Andrés announces, with Wildean hauteur, when his friends mock his horrible boyfriend’s workout Instas. The visual design of the show is exceptional, from Andrés’s cerulean hair and asymmetrical ruffled blouses to the creepily pastel dental office where the unsmiling Úrsula works. “Los Espookys” makes frequent meta-references to its own theatricality—at one point, after a nun tells a story about Andrés’s adoption, which we see elegantly dramatized, Andrés tells her, solemnly, “This brings no clarity or further insight into my past, but thank you for the beautiful flashback.” But although the show shares a certain archness with Wes Anderson films or the recent series “Maniac,” it is free of the accompanying self-seriousness. It’s loose and healthily illogical, with plenty of big laughs.

At a few junctures, there’s an Almodóvarian air to “Los Espookys,” particularly in a subplot about a glamorous newscaster, Gregoria, who appears to have been bewitched into her celebrity. (When, at a recording of her show, an audience member asks, “Is Satan real?,” her answer is a lusciously confident “Satan is real! In fact, he calls the studio every day and I hang up.”) But the series’ strongest precursor may be an older HBO show, sadly cancelled after three seasons: “Bored to Death,” the Brooklyn-hipster series, created by Jonathan Ames, about a novelist whose worship of Raymond Chandler inspires him to become a private eye. The shows have very different aesthetics—severed heads versus fedoras—but they share a chill, nonjudgmental air of decadence, a native flexibility about the joyful aspects of being drawn to the dark side.

Torres and Ciangherotti are magnetic, and Velasco is a treat as the bubbly Renaldo. But it’s Fabrega, as Tati, who feels like the true original. Her performance evokes weirdos like Reverend Jim, on “Taxi”—she’s got a silent-film physical strangeness and is at once spazzy and graceful, like a nerdy ballerina. Tati works a succession of side jobs, all of them exceptionally stupid: she wears in people’s new shoes, she’s a “human Fitbit,” she moves the second hand on a town clock. At one point, she is meant to dress up like a sea monster but instead puts on Marilyn Monroe drag and, for no logical reason, yells “Yabba dabba doo!”

“Well, it’s not a sea monster, but people like it,” the town’s mayor, who hired her to attract tourists, says, nailing the central idea of the show: a fun-enough copy might be better than the real thing.

We’re living in a moment of upswing for funny TV, which includes a refreshing number of standup specials and sketch shows, like Netflix’s excellent “I Think You Should Leave,” a rare must-watch. Each sketch in the series begins with an anxiety-provoking interaction that gradually warps into surreality: a birthday party, a job interview, a focus group. My family’s favorite is the one in which a woman at brunch (the fantastic Vanessa Bayer) energetically tries to write a self-deprecating Instagram post, only to escalate, stubbornly, into insults so extreme that they’re practically poetry: “If I died tomorrow, no one would shed a tear! Load my frickin’ carcass into the mud. No coffin please! Just wet, wet mud. BAE.” We’ve watched it so many times that we’ve memorized it.

The show has a notable consistency of vision. Another début series, “Alternatino,” on Comedy Central, created by the Guatemalan actor Arturo Castro, is much more hit-or-miss, but it’s still worth checking out. Castro—who portrayed wildly different characters on “Broad City” and “Narcos”—plays everyone from an ICE agent to a bitter bridesmaid. Absurdist sketches alternate with stories in which Castro plays a version of himself, a single-and-dating actor who’s mocked as “delicate.” These charming personal sequences feel like a “Friends”-like sitcom in miniature, one that’s focussed on Castro’s anxieties about how the world views him.

In one sketch, Castro goes to a Latin dance club with his date, who is white and obsessed with fantasies of hot Latin men. He ends up engaging in a fake fight with another guy, in Spanish, to impress her, as subtitles reveal a different dynamic. “Is this satin? It feels incredibly good,” Castro growls, clutching the other man’s shirt in feigned rage. “Yes, but it’s kinda warm. I wish I had worn something more breathable tonight,” the man shouts back, faking fury to help Castro. “I’m a dentist from Martha’s Vineyard!”

“Find me on Facebook,” Castro shouts, as the man storms out.

Although some sketches, such as a “House Hunters” parody, are fairly generic, a bigger proportion emphasize intra-Latino concerns, like an ad for tourism in Guatemala that is all about being jealous of Costa Rica. (The slogan is “Guatemala #Alsoaplace.”) In another, a time-travelling Che Guevara shows up in Times Square and is shocked to see himself on a T-shirt. Many sketches feature Castro’s comic, and often botched, attempts to address subtle bigotry. In one, he learns how to “pivot” white acquaintances away from subjects like Peruvian politics, only to repel them with talk about needlepoint; in another, his lecture of a white “lacrosse bro” goes horribly awry when it turns out that his target is a light-skinned Colombian.

The quality and the pacing vary—and the political satire, especially, walks a tricky line, as with an ad for ICE that boasts free-range children instead of ones in cages. Ugly topics like this are, arguably, the ones that comedy should be taking on, but when the bits don’t work it’s rough. When they do click, however, there’s a satisfying jolt. In one sketch, members of a “West Side Story”-ish street gang flex and twirl, ballet style, until suddenly the camera turns and reveals their opponents: not the Jets but the Charlottesville marchers, in khakis, with tiki torches, chanting, “You will not replace us.” The gang is aghast, uncertain what to do, except to dance more aggressively. It’s a small but effective gag, managing to nail the absurdity of the modern enemy without denying the threat. ♦