FX's 'Nip/Tuck' is hard to take

Watch out! "Nip/Tuck" returns for a second season tonight at 11 on FX.

Please note that the above paragraph began "watch out!" and not "watch it!" This is a show that, quite frankly, has become more frank than ever. And by "frank" I mean overtly, over-the-top in its sexual content.

The dialogue is as adult as anything you'll find on HBO. Oh, they don't use the f-word, but the discussions of sex are graphic beyond belief.

The amount of nudity in "Nip/Tuck" makes "NYPD Blue" look like "Barney" in comparison. There's not a lot of difference between what you'll see on this show and what you might happen across on some soft-core porn movie on Showtime that airs late at night.

Well, you'll see a lot more male butts and a lot fewer female breasts, but you get the point.

What's particularly frustrating is that there's so much that's so good about "Nip/Tuck." The drama here is often top-rate.

The stories continue to revolve around plastic surgeons Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon). Sean is a family man who, after suffering through enormous marital problems in Season 1, has hit a happy groove with his wife, Julia (Joely Richardson).

Christian, on the other hand, remains a lothario whose sexual escapades belie his attempt at creating a family of his own. He's co-parenting the baby it turns out he didn't father with a woman whose sexual history is at least as sordid as his.

To their personal dramas are added the dramas of Sean and Christian's patients, one of whom is Sean's mother-in-law — played by Richardson's real-life mother, Oscar-winner Vanessa Redgrave.

The dynamics of that situation make for fascinating, compelling drama. And it's nothing short of a television event to see Richardson and Redgrave play their scenes together as two women with a seriously dysfunctional relationship.

(Tonight's second-season premiere is presented without commercial interruption on FX.)

There were a lot of storylines like that in the first season of "Nip/Tuck." And there are a lot more in the first three episodes of this new season.

Which is not to say that, dramatically, the show is perfect. When Sean's career is threatened because he's suffering from uncontrollable spasms in his hand, it looks like umpteen plots of umpteen medical shows we've seen before on TV.