"Father of the Pride" is yet another example of how not to make a television show.

Ideally, the folks who make TV shows come up with a great idea and then figure out a way to make their great idea into a great TV show.

"Father of the Pride," however, is more about form than function. And NBC and DreamWorks put the proverbial cart before the horse. Over a period of years, NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker repeatedly went to DreamWorks exec Jeffrey Katzenberg, trying to get him to do a show using the same computer-generated animation process employed in "Shrek." Katzenberg repeatedly turned him down, saying it couldn't be done for a weekly TV show.

But the technology reached the point where Katzenberg agreed, so he went looking for a show to fit the technology. Which is analogous to signing a big star to do a TV show and then trying to figure out what to do with the big star.

Usually, that doesn't turn out well. And "Father of the Pride," while fairly amazing to look at and occasionally amusing, didn't turn out good.

Basically, this is a bawdy comedy — albeit one that's not particularly funny — about a family. A family of lions. White lions. White lions who perform in Siegfried and Roy's Las Vegas act. Which, of course, is defunct in real life. But more on that later.

Family patriarch Larry (voiced by John Goodman of "Roseanne" and the forthcoming CBS sitcom "Center of the Universe") is sort of a blue-collar guy . . . er, uh, lion, who just happens to be working for Siegfried and Roy. He's married to Kate (Cheryl Hines of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), who's the daughter of legendary lion headliner Sarmoti (Carl Reiner), who's now a semiretired, oversexed senior citizen.

Larry and Kate are the parents of a rebellious teen daughter, Sierra, and 9-year-old son, Hunter. And the menagerie includes various lions, tigers, elephants and Larry's pal, Snack the gopher (Orlando Jones).

If this all sounds cute, well, it isn't. Essentially, tonight's premiere is one big off-color joke with a plot that centers on the, um, mating habits of a couple of pandas. Not to mention the lions.

As I've written here before, "Father of the Pride" is not a show for children. The first sex joke comes less than 20 seconds into tonight's debut episode.

"Hey, Big Daddy is home and he's ready for lovin'," Larry proclaims when he gets home. "It may be 9 o'clock in New York, but right here, it's mountin' time."

And I don't care how many times NBC tells viewers this is an "adult comedy," the fact remains that the cute, cuddly, animated animal characters are going to attract young viewers to the show — which airs at 8 p.m. in this time zone. (Tonight's 9 p.m. airing is an exception.)