The less tasteful but more mainstream of the two is the animated “Mr. Pickles” on Sunday night, about a smiling, preternaturally cheerful pet collie who likes pickles and happens to be the devil — not in the sense of barking too much or tearing up the garden, but in the sense of tearing people’s entrails out or herding them into fetish orgies. It’s “Lassie” (the dog’s clueless 6-year-old master is Tommy instead of Timmy) done as a comic horror story in the Seth MacFarlane spirit (the dog can’t keep his paws off Tommy’s equally clueless mother). Only poor old Grandpa sees Mr. Pickles for what he really is. The overall effect is more grisly than funny, but a cult following seems ensured, and for added surreal-pop-culture cachet, Brooke Shields voices the mother.

The more interesting show makes its bow on Thursday night (actually very early Friday morning), when the comedy team of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim returns to Adult Swim with “Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories.” More polished than their sketch series “Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!,” “Bedtime Stories” mimics the sort of dark tales of human nature that fill the schedule of reality channels like A&E and Investigation Discovery, turning them into absurd and creepy yet unsettlingly ordinary vignettes. It’s like a postgraduate course in contemporary anti-comedy, and the episodes get funnier when you watch them a second time.