These days it's almost inconceivable to imagine America without Hollywood, that the first Hollywood feature (Cecil B. DeMille's 1914 film "The Squaw Man") was made less than 100 years ago, or that the combined economies of TMZ, Perez Hilton and Us Weekly must be larger than that of former Soviet Bloc countries.

Of course, Hollywood screws it up as often as it gets it right, and a lot of the time, Hollywood films -- especially comedies -- just aren't as good as they should be. But there have been stretches of time when the god of cinema seems to smile down onto studio lots, and movies seem to be made of pure magic. One such time came, perhaps not coincidentally, in one of America's darkest hours. In the 1930s and the early 1940s, the Depression descended upon America, the Hays censorship code descended onto Hollywood, and hallelujah, the screwball comedy was born.

Now that our nation finds itself again immersed in dark days, we can once again look to subversive screwball send-ups from high masters including Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra and Leo McCarey to offer both relief and withering, spot-on social commentary. The Parkway Theatre's series "Sweet Escapism: Screwball Comedies of the Great Depression" starts Monday with the Sturges-penned "Easy Living," followed in April with the classics "Twentieth Century," "His Girl Friday," "The Awful Truth" and "You Can't Take It With You."

These pictures offer many variations on a central formula: Girl meets boy, one of them determined, the other clueless. The potential lovers almost always hail from different social strata. The elites of the world typically receive their comeuppance (albeit in gentle and humorous ways) from the integrity-filled denizens of the lower and middle classes. Various characters fling witty repartee, and hilarious high jinks ensue. Usually, delightfully, the central couple fall in love.

But this generic description does not begin to capture the sublime delights of the screwball genre. There are no purer movie joys than watching Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell hurl hysterical barbs across a lively newsroom in "His Girl Friday," or witnessing John Barrymore's increasingly desperate Svengali grapple for his leading lady in Howard Hawks' freewheeling first talkie, "Twentieth Century," or seeing the divorced Grant and Irene Dunne trample all over each other's romantic prospects in "The Awful Truth."

We all deserve an occasional reprieve. "Sweet Escapism" offers, for Monday night at least, a smart and salient alternative to Britney and Spitzer that's unquestionably better than whatever dreck the networks are hawking these days.