Watchlist: Online Funny No Easier Than Television Funny On Tuesday, the streaming-video site Hulu introduces "Battleground," which it's calling its first original scripted series. Read my review here. That the series is "original" - meaning Hulu helped finance it - is important symbolically, but what's really important is that the episodes are each a half hour long, giving the show a television-like heft while testing the desire of viewers to watch TV-length programming over the Internet. Meanwhile Hulu continues to release more typical, short-form online series - pretty soon we can call them Web Classic - like "Paul the Male Matchmaker," whose 10 five-to-seven-minute episodes went up in a bunch on Monday. The show was created and written by Paul Bartholomew, its star, and Liz Tuccillo, a television story editor and producer ("Sex and the City," "Love Bites") best known for being one of the authors - the pessimistic female one - of "He's Just Not That Into You." "Paul the Male Matchmaker," featuring an overly confident, basically misogynistic idiot who inherits his aunt's dating business, belongs to a genre that could be labeled "What if your (fill in the blank) was a self-absorbed jerk." It was pioneered by Lisa Kudrow in her long-running online (now TV) series "Web Therapy." "Paul" proves a point about the genre: it's tougher than it sounds to make that sort of main character funny rather than irritating and one-note. Ms. Kudrow, with her barely concealed hysteria, succeeds; Mr. Bartholomew, playing it as a straight-ahead dope, gets tiresome. But in the usual manner of hit-and-miss Web series involving talented writers and lots of slumming guest stars, there are worthwhile moments scattered throughout "Paul." Episode 5, in which Paul consults with relationship "experts" playing versions of themselves (including Ms. Tuccillo), is amusing; disagreeing with the authors of "The Rules," Paul says, "If someone asks you on Thursday to go out and this is your only chance at sex probably for the rest of your life, I tell my ladies to take it." Those who regret the departure of Lisa Edelstein from "House M.D." will want to watch Episode 2, in which she plays a client who surprises even Paul with her enthusiasm for a self-confidence exercise involving a male blow-up doll. "Show me your sexy self," Paul says, and Ms. Edelstein's total commitment to the role is wonderful to behold.