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In the latest installment of its penetrating investigative series on the erotic landscape of premium cable's leading brand in the post-Sex-and-the-City era, "HBO: Where's All The Fucking?," a breakthrough: after previously throwing a spotlight on the distressing lack of onscreen coitus in Entourage, the Times now reveals that the network has been secretly devoting all of its ugly-bumping resources to the development of new series Tell Me You Love Me, which promises to entice viewers with levels of pay-TV screwing surpassed only by the raunchiest of expense-account-verboten hotel-room offerings:

Bosoms and things: That's not exactly a plot summary of "Tell Me," but it's not a bad place to start. Because that's where many viewers will start. Whatever else it may or may not be, "Tell Me," at least in its current form, will set a new precedent for prime-time TV when it has its premiere Sept. 9:

No previous series, on pay cable or anywhere else, has dared show anything even close to this much skin; the climax, if you will, of the first episode finds a woman (Sonya Walger) in her 30s masturbating her husband (Adam Scott) to orgasm, with the entire act and all relevant body parts plainly visible. Even Jane Alexander — yes, that Jane Alexander, the snow-domed, regally poised 67-year-old former chief of the National Endowment for the Arts — drops trousers for some frisky senior sex. [...]

Now faced with promoting the series, the network is doing a 180, pretending that the sex doesn't matter, as if only perverts and rich, aging comedy writers won't be able to see that "Tell Me" is not about smokin' sex but rather intimacy and trust and other topics familiar to anyone who's ever endured couples therapy.

As HBO Entertainment President Carolyn Strauss said in an interview, "The point isn't to be prurient. The point is to show the language of intimacy."

Or, as Mort told me: "I didn't realize people would be so focused on the sex." (An experiment: Try to read that quote aloud in the mirror without breaking a smile.)

Look for a conflicted HBO to struggle a bit in discovering the elusive sweet-spot between prurience and restraint, between sweaty porking and the committed lovemaking; soon, their first attempt at treading this fine line will reach reporters, a press kit containing a neoprene model of the pilot's signature, explicit hand-job and a mocked-up copy of Shaved Sexagenarians in Heat, but which arrives in a box labeled: "Tell Me You Love Me: Come For The Fucking, But Stay to Learn The Language of Intimacy."