'Tell Me' truth

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The executive producers of HBO's "Tell Me You Love Me" are either incredibly naive or incredibly disingenuous. Maybe both.

Their new series about several couples in various stages of couples therapy is the most overtly sexual on TV. Without getting too specific, there are scenes in the pilot that go beyond anything on TV — even the smutty movies that air late at night on some of those pay-cable channels.

"Tell Me You Love Me," which premieres Sept. 9, is already being called "the porn show."

And yet creator/executive producer Cynthia Mort sat in front of a room full of TV critics and feigned ignorance of any of this. "It's certainly turning out to get a lot more attention than I thought it would," she said.

Oh, puh-leeze.

One of the show's stars, Michelle Borth, obviously felt the need to draw a distinction — "We are not porn stars. We're actors."

Then producers tried to brush off questions about whether the sex acts are real or simulated.

"I'm not sure, and I don't think you need to get into it," executive producer Gavin Polone said.

What? He's "not sure" whether the sex is real? He doesn't want to "get into it"?

We were told that the sex scenes are not gratuitous and that they're integral to the storylines. This devolved into a debate about whether "Tell Me You Love Me," to use a Hollywood-ism, "pushes the envelope" in terms of its sexual content. (And it's absolutely clear that it does.)

"The decision we made wasn't to push the envelope but was to be honest about the language of intimacy," said HBO Entertainment President Carolyn Strauss.

Uh-huh. It's all about honesty.

And Mort insisted she had no intentions of doing any envelope pushing, which could only mean that she's never actually watched TV.

I don't disagree with the prepared response offered in defense of the sexual content on an HBO show.

"It's HBO. It's a little bit different," said cast member Ally Walker. "You pay to have this in your home."

"You have to make a discrete decision to subscribe to the network," said HBO co-president Richard Plepler. "So in that regard if people ... don't want it in their home, they don't have to have it in their home."

But to insist that the explicit sex scenes weren't designed to draw viewers is, well, impossible to believe.