Carell amuses TV critics tour

The “Angie Tribeca” co-producer dishes on his canine actor.

You can train a dog, but you can’t make him act. That’s the lesson Steve Carell shared Thursday at the Television Critics Assn. press tour for a panel on his latest project, TBS’ “Angie Tribeca,” shortly after the show’s resident dog actor was called away due to a preplanned “emergency.”

“The difficulty is getting the dog to do anything. Because the dog doesn’t know he’s an actor,” Carell said, before qualifying his answer with, “Jagger [the dog] is great. He’s a fantastic actor in his own right.”

“I have to say, Jagger has really grown as an actor. He’s better than me,” Rashida Jones quipped, though Carell didn’t agree with Jones’ assessment.

“There’s such a high level of difficulty with what Rashida is doing, and she makes it look so effortless,” he said.

Jones takes her own portrayal in stride and feels confident about the show entering the current television landscape, saying: “This is an era where a show doing well doesn’t depend on what’s going on culturally. There’s so much room now, so many places to show content and so many specific audiences to enjoy it.”

That’s good news for a show doing a fully farcical take on crime procedurals. Like “Police Squad” and “Get Smart” before it, “Angie Tribeca,” which debuts Jan. 17 with a 25-hour marathon of the first season, aims to tackle a very precise brand of humor that’s far from simple to calibrate.

“It is super broad, but within that broadness there are all sorts of rules,” Carell said, with co-executive producer (and wife) Nancy adding, “It’s a case-by-case basis. A joke-by-joke basis.”