There is an unexpectedly profound message lurking in the background of CBS’s new summer reality series, “Tuesday Night Book Club,” that premieres tonight at 10 p.m. Past the apparent superficiality of the seven real Arizona women it plans to follow is their struggle with the unsettling discovery that all of us eventually make as we grow up, marry, and have children: Life is hard.

Sounds simple. But most television shows try to hide that simple truth, or shade it in such a way that we can avoid finding the connections between the pain of others and our own. Shows like “Friends” portray people before they’ve had to confront the harsh realities of life; only Ross, with his predilection for marriage and children, seemed tortured by the deep questions of his future, while the rest happily settled for glib wisecracks and goofy fun. How many of us look back on our 20s as a swan song to innocence? Even the appeal of “Seinfeld” was that its thirtysomething characters avoided pain by behaving like children, and postponing the inevitable commitments that shape the long-term lives of most of us, beginning in our thirties.

But television has warmed, in recent years, to the notion that the uncomfortable truths of encroaching middle age cannot be avoided. Once we commit ourselves to marriage and children, we face the reality that we will one day shuffle off our mortal coils; that message began to surface in dramas like “Thirty-something,” and has even shaped the central storylines of “The Sopranos. “The notion that we can suddenly see far into our future – having committed ourselves to relationships intended to sustain us for the rest of our lives – can be both comforting and terrifying. Mortality becomes the reality most at play in “Tuesday Night Book Club,” as these seven women examine their life choices and measure their decisions against their desires.

One by one, the producers introduce us to these attractive women as archetypes – the loyal wife, the trophy wife, the party girl – and allow us to peer into their existence with the cameras rolling on their pain. Sipping white wine and curling up into their comfy couches in suburban Scottsdale, Ariz., these women confess to one another the agonies and ecstasies of their daily lives.The nominal story line of the pilot (it’s mostly talk) follows a week of planning for a housewarming party; the newly-married couple, Lynn and Eddie, bicker endlessly about responsibilities as they negotiate their future – if they even have one. Like the rest of this group that gathers once a week (at the home of Tina, the divorced mom archetype) for the ostensible purpose of discussing a book, Lynn’s looks have no apparent effect on her chances of happiness – and that’s a startling, welcome change of pace from most reality television shows, where hotties rule.

The book they’ve chosen to read for the first week is Jennifer Weiner’s novel, “Good In Bed,” and the title’s irony isn’t lost on these women.The only one who professes to have a healthy sex life is married to a rich, boorish lout who guzzles booze from a bottle – and it’s only because he’s open-minded enough to host group gropes in the Jacuzzi. Cris (the loyal wife) must contend with her husband’s struggle to recover from alcohol addiction; at only 25 years old, Jamie – the conflicted wife – already wants out of her marriage. Only Sara, the tanned blonde party girl, still hangs on to her freedom, or pretends to. She seems imprisoned by her choices, and prefers the comfort zone of the book group to the singles scene at the local bar.

None of us knows how our lives will turn out; that’s the mystery that makes it interesting – the “calamity of so long life,” as Shakespeare described it. The weakness of so much reality television is that it forces a structure onto the unpredictable and imperfect arrangement of our existence.What sets “Tuesday Night Book Club” apart from the rest is an acknowledgement of what should already be understood – that making marriage work, and keeping families whole, becomes one of the great challenges of life. These seven women from Scottsdale may have nicer houses and prettier faces and better clothes, but they share with the rest of us a realization that with only one chance at a happy life, we have to struggle to make the best of it. It may sound obvious, but it’s not – especially by the usual standards of television.

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Shame on Dana Delaney, an otherwise wonderful television actress who shot to fame on “China Beach” and who’s now claiming to have been offered the role of Bree on “Desperate Housewives” before Marcia Cross. Presumably she’s doing so to remind the world that she not only exists, but that she ranks higher on the list of coveted actresses in Hollywood than one might think. But it ends up only bringing to mind the ugly business of being an actress over 35 in Hollywood, and how it brings out the worst in people. Ms. Delaney will appear as the mother of a kidnapping victim on NBC’s “Kidnapped” next fall; I’ve watched it, and she’s great, as always. Does Ms.Delaney want to know who got offered that role first, or would she prefer that her competition have the class to keep quiet?

dblum@nysun.com