In a move that should bring joy to fans of British and European science fiction television, the Sci Fi Channel fulfilled years of febrile anticipation Thursday by bringing LEXX to the United States.

Sci Fi will start running the one-hour comedy/drama, which has already developed a cult following in most of the rest of the world, in January.

Previously, the main experience U.S. viewers had with the series was in the form of four early double-length telefilms sporadically broadcast as "Tales from a Parallel Universe" on Showtime and The Movie Channel since 1997. The one-hour episodes also recently enjoyed an extremely limited run on a local station in the Pacific Northwest.

Indeed, the films have appeared so often on Showtime Beyond's calendar that some have speculated that Showtime, not Sci Fi, would be the likeliest candidate for airing the second series of 20 episodes.

Salter Street Films, the Nova Scotian production house responsible for LEXX, describes the series as "moody and stylized yet full of wry humor."

To fans of the genre, the series is often summed up as a cross between legendary British offerings Red Dwarf and Blake's Seven, combining a generally somber tone illuminated with flashes of brilliant absurdity -- what Salter calls "sci-fi for the Beavis and Butthead Generation."

The series follows the adventures of a band of galactic misfits -- a bumbling prole, a bad girl, a moody dead guy and a robot head -- who make their homes aboard the Lexx, a big spacefaring insect with a poor attitude.

"The Lexx is a large dragonfly-shaped bug, about the size of Manhattan," Salter says in its press materials. "It has been designed to destroy all planets outside of the League of the Twenty Thousand," a sinister interplanetary empire ruled by the vaguely gnostic villain known only as "His Galactic Shadow."

Over the course of the one-hour episodes, the crew confronts hungry plants, the planet of the television people, space hillbillies and the end of the universe, among other threats.

To many U.S. viewers, overseas SF television means primitive special effects -- the "Doctor Who" syndrome. However, LEXX makes extensive use of the latest computer graphics technology to portray a high-tech universe gone to seed.

"Science fiction for film or television today is typically produced with traditional technology with the addition of a few minutes of special effects per episode," Salter says. "In the LEXX movies, up to 75 percent of each episode is effected by computer animation. Virtually all sets and large-scale props are computer generated."

For example, according to Salter, the first hour-length episode "contains more FX shots than Star Wars."

The series' hybrid German/Canadian production team used a variety of the most advanced graphics technology to create the effects, including Indigo workstations from SGI and Flint software from Discreet Logic.

The decision to bring the show to Sci Fi represents part of the channel's continuing commitment to bring fresh programming to SF fans. Only days previously, Sci Fi announced that it has acquired rebroadcast rights to the recent network series Brimstone and Prey.

"We're very excited about it," said Thomas Vitale, vice president of acquisitions and scheduling for the channel.

Meanwhile, those who can't wait for January, LEXX episodes are already airing in Russia, Canada and throughout Europe, and the series is coming to Latin America soon as well.

If the upcoming run is a success, Sci Fi has already committed to an option on the third LEXX "season," comprising a reported 13 additional episodes.

Details on these episodes -- currently in production -- are sketchy, but the fact that the second season ended with the collapse of the entire universe indicates that things could get even weirder for the Lexx crew as time goes on.