WEIRD & WILD: Pee-wee Herman bio

BIOGRAPHY: PEE-WEE HERMAN
Thursday at 10 p.m. ET, BIO Channel

So is this new Biography hour a profile of the retro kiddie character or of his actor-portrayer Paul Reubens? Either way, it's a wild ride.

Reubens started in comedy 30 years ago with L.A.'s influential improvisation group The Groundlings, where he created his Pee-wee character of a big kid in a small suit with a perpetual snit. Stand-up sellouts and a hit HBO special led to his 1980s CBS cult crossover Pee-wee's Playhouse, a color-riot of a Saturday morning children's series with enough pure strangeness (and sneaky double entendres) to lure a sizable adult following.

But "adult" proved the operative word in another sense in 1991 when Reubens was arrested in an X-rated movie theater while visiting his family in Florida. His kiddie career on the skids, the actor reinvented himself by playing an ever-changing roster of characters in Murphy Brown, Ally McBeal and memorably last season in 30 Rock and Pushing Daisies -- a show almost as DayGlo fluorescent as Reubens' old kiddie fave.

And now there's another Pee-wee Herman movie on the horizon.