TV review: ‘Archer’

TV review: ‘Archer’

Agent Sterling Archer references a Tom Cruise scene from ‘Mission: Impossible.’

As we rejoin the hardy cast of FX’s animated spy drama “Archer,” it’s a pity Sterling Archer isn’t around to enjoy all the fun we’re having.

Oh, he’s physically there, with H. Jon Benjamin delivering his hilariously insensitive and more than occasionally off-center lines.

He’s even getting close again to Lana (Aisha Tyler), his old girlfriend, as a team of heavily armed Russian operatives arrives to kill them. Amazing how that can revive some of the old kinship.

Trouble is, he doesn’t remember who he is. He’s the victim of an insidious disease that causes loss of identity.

Needless to say, that’s not as serious on this politically incorrect comedy as it might be on a more conventional spy drama. But it fits in quite nicely with real-life spy satires, back to the days of Peter Sellers’ “Pink Panther.”

Lest anyone get nostalgic, the more immediate gag about Sterling’s amnesia is that he thinks he’s the proprietor of a hamburger joint called “Bob’s Burgers,” which of course is a Sunday-night show on FX’s big-sister network Fox.

Archer brings his narcissistic disinterest to his imagined identity as Bob, but the story shifts quickly to the familiar core characters, notably Sterling’s mother Malory (Jessica Walter).

It also gives decent screen time to Cyril (Chris Parnell), Cheryl (Judy Greer) and Pam (Amber Nash), all of whom have a remarkable ability to be indifferent to each other at both opportune and inopportune moments.

For viewers, most of the jokes still click. That includes gun-violence jokes, which happily feel removed from real life because, like the rest of “Archer,” they retain a thick and endearing veneer of absurdity.

Every so often we need that.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com