For those few hardy souls who hold out hope for the future of situation comedies taped in front of a live audience, the highly anticipated debut of HBO’s “Lucky Louie” this Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. will not prove to be a memorable landmark, except as a low point in the history of HBO. What was supposed to be a bold venture by the top programmers in the television business has turned out to be yet another lifeless assortment of sex jokes for the studio audience’s titillation – the only variant being the foul language that adds specificity, though not humor, to the cause. Unlike its most obvious inspiration, “Everybody Loves Raymond,” this is a multi camera family comedy that parents should shield their children from at all costs.

The premise of “Lucky Louie” draws heavily from “Raymond,” which itself descended directly from the great marriage comedies of the 1950s and 1960s that once dominated television. Classics like “The Honeymooners” showcased needy losers and their strong, acerbic wives in relationships shaped by wit and love. The formula evolved and prospered for decades (most recently with hit shows like “Raymond” and “The Simpsons”) as comedy writers explored the transformation of the American family, and embraced the values that endured. But in the case of “Lucky Louie” – in which unlucky Louie (Louis C.K.) works in a muffler shop while his sharp-tongued wife, Kim (Pamela Adlon), has a better-paying job as a nurse – nothing but sex seems to matter. Even “The Flintstones” played more with the subtle dynamics of marriage than this off-putting enterprise does.

In the first episode of “Lucky Louie,” the show’s executive producer and creator, Louis C.K. – who also plays the title character – sets up the ostensible thread of the first season: His wife wants to have a second baby, a desire that sets off a mid-course assessment of the troubles in their sex life. The pilot – which opens with a hilarious and endearing dialogue between Louie and his 4-year-old daughter – veers sharply off course when it delves into Louie’s use of a closet to masturbate, and the implied rejection of his wife that his habit creates. It’s an area that was already dealt with – and far more amusingly – on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Once the couple has finally moved forward with their plans to conceive in Episode 2, we get to see them actually having sex on screen (not a pretty sight), which results in Kim’s first real orgasm. In truth, it’s a funny enough premise, and it would have been interesting to see how a subtler show might have played with it. But on “Lucky Louie,” we’re witness to Louie acting like a goofy teenager who just copped his first feel. When asked by his next-door neighbor what he was thinking about when he gave his wife the orgasm – don’t even ask how that conversation came to pass – Louie utters a vile and unprintable insult about his wife. It’s the sort of comment that would have gotten Raymond Barone served with divorce papers, and deservedly so.

By the end of the third episode, in which a friend of Louie’s has an unexpected heart attack, you’ll be amazed (and nauseated) by how many different ways the show’s writers manage to relate every plot point to sex. Because this is HBO, such mentions often come with visual and verbal shocks – from the sight of Louie’s penis to the use of language never before spoken in front of a live television audience. It’s all done in the name of humor, but cursing stops being truly comical after the fourth grade. Here it becomes a tool for violence and distance; every time Louie and Kim swear at each other, it puts them at odds in an irreconcilable way. There’s no moment in the first three episodes when you can see what brought these two together, or what keeps them a couple.

For all those who keep mourning its imminent demise, there’s still great hope that the half-hour comedy will continue to mature. HBO deserves much of the credit for that, with its support in recent years for innovative shows like “The Larry Sanders Show,” “Sex and the City,” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” But in this effort to move the multicamera sitcom forward into a new era, HBO has stumbled badly. The channel that changed television forever has reversed direction, delivering an obscene and outdated take on the medium’s most enduring classics. Discerning viewers – and that comprises virtually anyone who pays the premium for HBO programming each month – will quickly and resoundingly reject “Lucky Louie.”

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HBO subscribers will also be sorry to discover that the third-season premiere of “Entourage” and subsequent episodes provided to critics don’t come anywhere close to the heights of last season’s terrific run. Way too much time goes to waste with the opening weekend of “Aquaman” and its box-office fate; most of the first two episodes could have been compressed into 10 good minutes. Can there really be any doubt for “Entourage” fans that the movie will make Vince Chase a movie star?

The real “mystery” of “Entourage” is how four young, single men can possibly spend so much time together without losing their minds. It’s ludicrous – these guys even wake up at the same time for breakfast every morning. Yes, the show is called “Entourage,” but can’t they go anywhere by themselves? The one welcome addition to the series this season comes in Episode 3, when a fifth wheel arrives to change the composition of the group. He’s an edgy, powerful presence that seems likely to shake up the together-forever premise in episodes to come – and just in time.

The third and final season of “Deadwood” precedes “Entourage” and “Lucky Louie” this Sunday night at 9 p.m., and will no doubt bring joy to those hooked on its ongoing tale of violence and lawlessness in South Dakota, circa 1877. For those of us who are used to spending Sunday night with stories of violence and lawlessness in New Jersey, circa 2006, “Deadwood” provides a welcome chance to turn the television set on a little later for a change.

dblum@nysun.com