The Heart, She Holler: Patton Oswalt and Kristen Schaal Star in New, Creepy Adult Swim Miniseries

The Heart, She Holler

​ The Heart, She Holler is a TV dream for fans of bizarre comedies. The six-episode miniseries, set to debut on Adult Swim this Sunday night, was created by Vernon Chatman, John Lee and Alyson Levy. Chatman and Lee are best known as co-creators of the scathing children's television parody Wonder Showzen, as well as the bizarre, CG animated series Xavier: Renegade Angel. Levy worked with the duo on both series as well as Delocated, Jon Glaser's mockumentary about a man in the Witness Protection Program who gets his own reality show.

Then there are the stars -- Patton Oswalt, Kristen Schaal and Heather Lawless -- who play siblings struggling for power in Heartshe Holler, a small town in what Oswalt calls a "mythical mutated South." The Heart, She Holler is like a Southern gothic version of Soap, but far more disturbing than one might suspect.

Kristen Schaal as Hurshe Heartshe

​"There are a lot of David Lynchian elements to it," says Schaal, who plays Hurshe Heartshe. Certainly, the odd, borderline frightening characters and surreal plot twists recall Twin Peaks.

Schaal has had her share of quirky characters to play. One of her best known roles is playing obsessive fan Mel on Flight of the Conchords. But Hurshe goes beyond quirky. She's a horrible, manipulative person driven by greed and not above sinking to unseemly lows to get what she wants. She is the opposite of her sister Hambrosia (Heather Lawless), a fragile, conservative-looking woman who is not only a dead-ringer for Sissy Spacek's Carrie, but also possesses some of the same powers. With Hambrosia, the audience might feel a trickle of sympathy. She at least appears to feel some remorse about the terrible things she does. That's not the case with Hurshe.

"The thing I loved about playing Hurshe is that she's not like any character I've played before," says Schaal. "She does the most despicable outrageous things."