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Pete Holmes' new HBO comedy is, well, painful. Intentionally. And it's autobiographical pain.

In "Crashing," he plays "kind of like a 2007 version of myself," Holmes said.

And in 2007, he was an unsuccessful stand-up comedian. He wasn't struggling, he was bombing. And his life wasn't going so great, either.

In the premiere of "Crashing" (Sunday, 11:30 p.m., HBO), Pete arrives home from a bad stand-up performance to find his wife (Lauren Lapkus) in bed naked — and the guy she just slept with is in the bathroom.

(This is HBO, so, yes, there is full-frontal male nudity.)

After storming out, Pete goes onstage again and talks about what just happened. And it does not go well.

Comedian Artie Lange, guest starring as a version of himself, tells Pete it was "extraordinarily bad."

"My cousin was giving a best-man speech at a wedding once, and during the speech, he accidentally admitted he molested a kid as a teenager. That was less awkward than your set."

"Crashing" is all about awkwardness. Like when, later in the premiere, Pete pours out his story and his pain to three preteens on the subway.

It's not just that his act isn't working, Pete's life has fallen apart. His wife has been supporting him, so the end of his marriage leaves him "Crashing" on other people's couches.

Yes, there are a lot of TV shows about stand-up comedians, but "Crashing" is definitely different. Unlike successful comedians ranging from "Seinfeld" to "Louie," Pete is a total failure.

"There hasn't yet, to my knowledge, been a show about what it's like in those five raw, very amateur, exposed years of stand-up," said Holmes, who's convinced that what fellow comedian Bill Burr once told him is true — that every stand-up goes through half a decade of bombing.

Holmes and executive producer Judd Apatow "jumped at the opportunity to make a show about what it's like way before you're making any money — what it really takes to kind of grind out your place in a career," Holmes said.

As is the case with stand-up comedians, you either think Holmes and "Crashing" are funny or you don't. He has a charm and style all his own; he's not a clone of anyone else. Like the faux Pete, he grew up religious and married young to the only woman he ever slept with.

(His TV wife returns in Episode 3, but there's really no coming back from her betrayal.)

Yes, this is HBO, but Holmes' jokes are pretty PG-13. (There's plenty of R-rated material from the other real-life comedians who appear in the show — a list that includes Lange, T.J. Miller and Sarah Silverman.)

If you subscribe to HBO, give it a couple of episodes and "Crashing" just might grow on you. But even if you're a huge Pete Holmes fan, you're more likely to smile than laugh out loud.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.