A few years ago, it looked like affable Aussie Mel Gibson's career in comedy might be over. Two of his most notable films of the past decade, a Christian-themed remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a mad-cap road movie filmed entirely in the Mayan language, failed to get any laughs at all.

Where was the loose-cannon cop of Lethal Weapon who jumped off a building with a random civilian to make a point? And where was the off-kilter detective of Lethal Weapon II who did something similarly impulsive to make a different point? When he tried to make it up to everyone recently with a zany revenge farce, it was too late. Audiences wanted to see the old Mel but somehow understood that he was gone and that they would probably be suck with new Mel, a man who took himself far too seriously to be an effective comedian.

Well, all that may be about to change thanks to the surprising success of this year's runaway hit The Mel Gibson Tapes. In this innovative new web show modelled loosely after similar cringe-inducing comedies such as Extras and Curb Your Enthusiasm, we see Gibson running through various banal daily activities- but with hilariously awkward results.

In one episode, he and his girlfriend Oksana get ready for a night out but Gibson is bothered by something and he can't seem to let it go. Her breasts, he complains, are too nice. They look fake. The whole set-up is an obvious homage to the strikingly similar Seinfeld episode. Apparently, Oksana had a finishing line for that scene ("they're real and they're spectacular") but as the executive producer Gibson felt that it made the joke too obvious and they cut it.

That's too bad, too, because it's just the sort of wink that the show really needs now and then to remind you that it isn't real. Perhaps its greatest weakness is its complete believability. In fact, most people who hear the show (most of the episodes are only available in audio form in order to generate demand for the DVDs when they come out this fall) fail to grasp the fact that it's a show at all and truly believe that Mel Gibson is the character he plays, a filthy, racist, abusive bastardly bastard.

The fact that Gibson plays himself on the show is nothing new, nor that he makes himself into a villain. Olivia Newton John played a less than nice version of herself on Glee this year, and a while back Neal Patrick Harris allowed himself to be portrayed as a car thief, a straight one at that. What makes The Mel Gibson Tapes so brave is just how low-down, scummy and generally vile he allows himself to appear on the show.

And his courage goes farther than that. Rather than taking the traditional route, Gibson is distributing his series through gossip sites like Radar online and TMZ. In a way, it makes sense in the context of the show that he would avoid the major networks in this endeavor because, as Mel Gibson's on-screen character repeatedly insists, they're all run by "the Jews."

This week brings us the fourth episode in which the titular star demands oral sex and threatens to burn down his house. Let's see Larry David do that.

In The Mel Gibson Tapes we see a comedian at the peak of his craft. His comic timing is pitch-perfect. All those who feared that Gibson may have lost some of that sparkle that made his early work so special now have nothing to worry about. Mel Gibson, the funny one, is back.