BY ADAM THOMLISON

TV Media

Q: Is Chris O’Dowd ever going to do TV again? I like him in movies, but he’s never been better than he was on “The IT Crowd.”

A: Actually, Chris O’Dowd has been doing TV all along, but there are some reasons why you may not have known that.

A lot of his TV work has been using his voice only. He narrated the animated kids’ series “Puffin Rock,” and voiced Dr. Cockroach in the short-lived DreamWorks cartoon “Monsters vs. Aliens” (based on the movie of the same name).

But his most high-profile recent TV work has been on the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, shortform series “State of the Union” earlier this year. You can be forgiven for not knowing about this one because not only is it on the slightly obscure Sundance TV channel, but the episodes are only 10 minutes long, and there have only been 10 of them.

Well, so far, at least. There’s been no official word of a second season, but creator Nick Hornby said he would be open to the idea. Before you get too excited, though, he said that a second season would involve different characters, and so

O’Dowd would be unlikely to return.

And so most of “State of the Union’s” profile comes from its success. It was a hit with critics and won basically all of the Emmys for short-form series, including a best actor statue for O’Dowd.

So perhaps you’re right, he is best at TV. As you point out, his best-known role is still that of irritable IT nerd Roy on the modern-classic British sitcom “The IT Crowd.” But he leveraged that success to land a run of bigscreen roles, most notably a supporting role in the 2011 smash-hit comedy “Bridesmaids.”

Q: I admit I haven’t seen it in a while, but is it true John Travolta was in “Carrie”?

A: Just before his back-to-back star-making turns (in 1977’s “Saturday Night Fever” and then “Grease” the following year),

Travolta did indeed play minor villain Billy Nolan in the horror classic “Carrie” (1976).

It was his second big-screen role (the first was even more obscure — a small part in the even smaller 1975 horror film “The Devil’s Rain”), but he was already starting to establish himself as a TV star at the time.

“Welcome Back, Kotter” premiered a year before “Carrie” was released, and Travolta’s character on that show, Vinnie Barbarino, was a fan favorite.

Yet his “Carrie” role was indeed pretty minor. It mostly amounted to helping his far more villainous girlfriend, Chris, torment the titular Carrie. But he was the one who gathered the pig’s blood that was dumped on her in the climactic prom scene — even people who’ve never seen the movie are probably familiar with that part.