Underpants with a GPS system. Cowless meat. Office chairs so itchy they make workers more productive. A metal that’s as hard as steel but can bounce and is edible.

Impossible? Not for Veridian Dynamics. These zany ideas, some culled from actual experiments, are part of ABC’s fun sitcom “Better Off Ted,” premiering at 8:30 p. m. Wednesday. Starring Portia de Rossi (“Arrested Development”) as Veronica, an icy executive at the morally dubious firm, and Jay Harrington (“Private Practice”) as Ted, the affable head of research and development, this show is a welcome relief for people weary of grim news and reality shows.

As funny and far-fetched as the ideas are, what makes this office comedy easy to relate to is that it’s all vaguely possible. Who really knows what goes on behind the modern facades in manicured corporate parks?

“Since I have been a vegan, I have been researching all kinds of ways animals are used in foods, and I see those big warehouses and wonder about what goes on inside,” de Rossi says. “It’s not too far from reality. There are huge corporations that manufacture food and makeup and nuclear weapons.”

Harrington says, “I live in Santa Monica. The Rand Corporation is near the water, and I thought of Veridian and the Rand—this glass structure that only the select can get into. It’s like ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’—what goes on in there?”

Inside Veridian, those really smart guys, Lem and Phil (Malcolm Barrett, “My Best Friend’s Girl,” and Jonathan Slavin, “My Name Is Earl”)—the sort who ran the chemistry club and read physics texts for fun—are hard at work developing whatever they are ordered to create.

In the pilot, they make pumpkins into weapons for a country that has an excess of the gourds but a paucity of destructive missiles. Ted puts his staff to work looking for a use for the super-itchy fabric. They make an office chair so uncomfortable it discourages daydreaming and thus increases productivity.

A far scarier experiment in the pilot has Veronica wanting to freeze Phil. Cognizant that this is akin to asking someone to risk his life for his job, Veronica knows she can rely on Ted’s relationship with his workers to ease the way.

“I think she is very insensitive but fair,” de Rossi says of her character. “She is inflexible and obviously very career-driven. And I think the thing, though, that I keep reminding myself when I play Veronica is that she doesn’t think about other people and what impact she has on them, because it is all kind of in the realm of business and getting things done. It is all about the end justifying the means and just being very succinct and efficient and she just doesn’t sugarcoat anything. I don’t think she is a cruel person or a mean person, just very efficient.”

The pilot does a decent job of introducing these characters. We learn that Ted’s wife left him “to go save the world,” and he’s now a single dad to adorable 7-year-old Rose.

He’s attracted to co-worker Linda (Andrea Anders, “The Class”), who takes out her grievances against the company by swiping coffee creamers. Ted is the boss everyone wants: He’s smart, cheerful and motivates his troops.

Harrington describes Ted as “not unlike a lot of my friends back east, some are in finance or corporate insurance, working for large multinational conglomerates. He loves what he does. Every week, knowing no matter what kind of hijinks ensue, I want to do the right thing. He has his own conscience, which is pretty strong.”