I catch Joe Pera at an intimate moment. Walking into his New York apartment, he sounds flustered. He has just been to the supermarket, which, as he tells us in series two of Joe Pera Talks With You, is a very personal place, a living theatre where “there’s always a show going on” and man must face his limits: “Can I eat this? Will I eat this? Can I afford it?” In the episode, his character reads his shopping list then stops. “That’s too much information,” he says in his folksy mumble. Today, the real-life Pera already had porridge for breakfast. “But I had to run out and get something more hearty,” he says warily, as if I’ve asked him something much more probing.

Set in northern Michigan, Pera’s Adult Swim comedy showcases the small, beloved pleasures of the choir teacher he portrays. As a rule, anything Larry David hates, Pera would probably love: there are episodes about grocery stores and rocks; on sleeping during a storm; and the science of stacking “the perfect egg bite” on your fork at breakfast. It’s a show about community and contentment. Most importantly, it is wildly funny, endearing and profound. “It is said that if you put time and effort into your garden, you will be rewarded,” Pera says in an episode about beans. “But this is hardly true, and I have been devastated in the past.”

In an era of manic comedy, this beautifully strange proposition – closer in spirit to Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood than anything else on the transgressive Adult Swim – has become a balm. Pera’s character is like a human Mr Snuffleupagus, with an aversion to conflict that almost sees him sell his house after a For Sale sign accidentally ends up in his lawn. On the phone, he speaks haltingly, and finishes answers with a tidy note of conclusion, as if fastening his top button. The fictional Pera’s job is the only apparent gap between them. “I didn’t wanna do a show where I was a comedian in New York City because that’s been done a million times,” he says. “I thought: if I didn’t go into comedy, what would my life have been like?”

The show started with an animated episode, Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep, in which he does precisely that with a succession of bewitchingly dull stories about barns and baseball (Adult Swim created a 10-hour loop for true insomniacs). It came out in spring 2016 – a year when many people might have struggled to nod off. They didn’t consider that when writing, says Pera, although they ended up shooting another special, Joe Pera Helps You Find the Perfect Christmas Tree, on election night. “Everybody woke up in a very strange mood and we just shot trees and scenery.” He sighs: “It’s not addressing the issue straight on, but it was nice to look at trees for the day. I hope that maybe that sense of calm that we felt during the production can help people feel a sense of calm when they watch.”

Gentleness remains a guiding principle. “Could somebody watch this 11-minute episode, then close their eyes and have a great night’s sleep with sweet dreams?” Pera says. “A couple of people in England told me that they fall asleep listening to the BBC shipping forecast, so it’s like that, but with jokes.” (He says he’s considering a future episode where his character turns into a turtle.)

It is an antidote to the hysteria of modern life; in a sea of toxic masculinity, Pera cuts a benign figure, though he isn’t into the idea that the show is in any way political. “Act decent to one another?” he says when asked what its ethos is. “I don’t know.” Clearly uncomfortable with deeper readings, he says it is just the show he would want to watch. He is happy when fans say they watch it with their families, like a festive film. “My ideal world is made of kids and old people only,” he says, with a faint chuckle, “and we do that a lot, which I don’t think a ton of shows do.”

Rock star... Joe Pera. Photograph: Adult Swim

Pera counts his grandparents among his formative influences. They starred in his early videos, which distinguished him from his peers, he says. More importantly, Grandpa Jerry (“Kind of a ham”) and Nana Josephine (“One of the funniest people I know or have seen, even among comedians”) loved performing and he loved their company. It’s obvious: Pera, often uneasy in conversation, talks about them in extensively fond detail. “And,” he says, “if you work with your grandparents, they’ll make you lunch afterwards.”

He swears he is 22 (though I would bet he’s closer to 35 by dating his YouTube history). Growing up in Buffalo, upstate New York, Pera says that from age five his life was “100% drugs and breaking stuff”. And? “Smashing TVs and hockey.” (He asks whether we have ice hockey in the UK, and sounds sad that it isn’t very popular.) He and a friend started writing jokes in high school, then college, then ran a comedy night in New York for six years. Pera’s bumbling nature might make him seem naive, but he is adamant about the importance of rigorous writing. When he started standup, he knew he was quieter than other comedians, and not “super quick. Slowing it down made me focus on the joke-writing itself because every joke that I told had to be sharp enough for them to not hate me.”

With the show, he and his co-writers have to make “every bit of the 11 minutes count”. Its best episode is Joe Pera Reads the Church Announcements, in which he discovers the Who’s Baba O’Riley and loses his mind: throwing tissues, manically eating ice-cream and encouraging his fellow, elderly churchgoers to join him in a moving rendition. It’s the perfect distillation of how it feels to obsess over a song. Licensing the track broke the budget, but Adult Swim loved the episode and waved it through. (Pera doesn’t know if any of the Who have seen it.)

For season two, more episodes meant bigger stories, including Pera’s relationship with a doomsday prepper who forces him to confront the scary things in life. After setting the first season in autumn and winter, this season is about spring (Pera ranks Easter “the third most romantic day of the year”) and summer, to show off Michigan’s nature and because it means they’re not filming in -7C. The more time he spends there, the more tempted he is to move: “That alternate life where I have a backyard and 12 kids.”

While prosaic, the fictional Pera’s way of life is almost fantastically fulfilled. If the show has a message, this is it, he says. He mentions legendary US sitcom writer Norman Lear, who said he goes to sleep each night “anticipating and delighting in the great taste” of his morning coffee. “I can relate. I’m not a millionaire like him, but sometimes you can’t beat that feeling of waking up and drinking a cup of coffee.” He considerately adapts for regional difference. “You guys drink tea. A nice cup of tea in the morning. That moment, if you allow it to be good – that’s enough.”

Joe Pera Talks With You seasons one and two are available now on All4