After headlining two failed comedies, Andy Richter allows himself to dream . . . moderately.

Conan O’Brien’s former sidekick enters the TV series fray again as an accountant who accidentally becomes a private investigator in the new NBC comedy “Andy Barker, P.I.” (premiering Thursday night at 9:30 on WHDH, Ch. 7).

“It doesn’t need to be the new ’Heroes’ or the new sensation,” Richter said in a recent conference call with reporters. “I would like a sort of medium success that chugs along for four or five years that makes people happy and makes us comfortable. As somebody that’s in the comedy business looking at the big runaway success comedies, there are so many whose success I applaud and so many whose success I’m absolutely baffled by and think, ’This is what people want?’ To hope for runaway success is sort of like hoping to be hit by lightning because it will either kill you or make you a superhero. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just too kind of volatile and weird.”