Only a handful of new TV series have premiered yet, and already a strong candidate for least likable lead character jumps snarling off the screen in the causticly funny satire “Action,” which premieres at 9:30 tonight on Fox.

Cartoonishly based on Joel Silver, one of the show’s real-life executive producers, Peter Dragon (played by Jay Mohr of “Jerry Maguire” and “Go”) is the arrogant head of DragonFire Films, which has produced a string of mega-hits starring Tinseltown’s biggest action heroes. As he berates a commissary worker, whose Employee of the Month parking spot Dragon has taken, “My last 10 pictures made a hundred billion dollars for this studio, so I’m employee of the [bleeping] century.”

Dragon’s rapid-fire monologues all sound like this, complete with bleeps that leave little to the imagination, whether he’s disparaging supplicants such as agents and writers or sucking up to actors or his studio head, Bob Gianopolis. The only people he’s marginally civil to are his one-time Borscht Belt security guard/chauffeur, Uncle Lonnie (the criminally underused Buddy Hackett) and child star-turned-hooker-turned DragonFire executive Wendy Ward (Illeana Douglas of “Grace of My Heart” and “To Die For”).

The fun of “Action,” which is executive produced by Silver (“Lethal Weapon,” “Die Hard”) and TV producer Chris Thompson (“The Larry Sanders Show,” “Bosom Buddies”), is watching Dragon mishandle setbacks. After finding out that Stuart, his president of production, has optioned a screenplay by the wrong writer, he bellows, “You mean I paid $250,000, and I got the wrong Jew?”

When his latest release, “Slow Torture,” tanks, he sits there mutely squirming as Gianopolis, a gay man who uses Dragon’s ex-wife as his beard, delivers the news that he’s killing the sequel.

“Action,” originally created for HBO, is exactly the kind of envelope-pushing show that Fox head Doug Herzog championed so fiercely at Comedy Central, and that the networks could use more of. Saddled with a poorly matched lead-in in “Family Guy,” it faces tough time-slot competition, with only CBS’ “Chicago Hope” on the downside of its run. So although it deserves better for its ambition, don’t expect great box-office success for “Action.”