Yes, Virginia, there is room for one more inside-show biz series – as long as it’s Lisa Kudrow’s HBO gem, “The Comeback.” Sly as “The Larry Sanders Show,” keener than “Fat Actress,” more sympathetic than “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” this new half-hour comedy hits the bull’s-eye in every direction. It’s funny, sad, smart and immensely appealing.

That’s due in no small measure to Kudrow, an Emmy winner for “Friends,” yet it’s clear here, a seriously underrated talent. Her subtly twisted Phoebe was perhaps too off-kilter to be appropriately appreciated. Not so with Kudrow’s new incarnation – a sweet, slightly dim Hollywood has-been subjected to indignity after indignity in her quest to regain trendy fame.

She’s not the target. Hollywood is, and celebrity culture and reality TV and contemporary society. “The Comeback” – which premieres 8:30 p.m. Sunday on Sunflower Broadband Channel 400 – is where they all collide. Kudrow’s character, Valerie Cherish – the name’s the first joke – is known as the star of the 15-years-earlier sitcom “I’m It,” a four-season fad. Not sustained like a “Friends”-style smash, not meteoric as “Twin Peaks,” its OK-length run precisely nails the level of Valerie’s talent, as well as her middlingly pleasant personality. She could be the poster girl for TV’s renowned least-objectionable-program theory of natural selection.

Now she’s looking to be the star of two new shows: a lamebrained new network sexcom, plus a reality series about a onetime star trying to make a comeback. Thus we get “raw footage” from the cameras that are forever capturing her desperation, awkwardness, cell-phone pleadings and even the occasional fender-bender. Valerie needs the show – the same way that, as she says in limply assertive self-help-speak, “I need to know that I’m being heard.”

Which, of course, she isn’t, not as a 40-year-old woman in a babes-and-bod-obsessed medium, and not as a so-so talent who’s essentially an interchangeable part to writers and executives who operate from a checklist of TV Cliches Viewers Don’t Hate as Much as the Other Ones Yet. Her new sitcom is appalling, the writers cynical hacks, the director just trying to keep the pilot palatable. (Adding authenticity, he’s played under the pseudonym Alan Smithee by go-to pilot maker James Burrows, director of everything from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to “Will & Grace.”)

If the nubile twinkies starring in Valerie’s new sitcom aren’t inadvertently dissing her, it’s the network that sends her a second-class gift basket, or her inattentive husband at home with his anorexic daughter. Valerie leans on her agingly chipper gay stylist for the strokes she needs to get through the day.

The reality conceit of a show behind a show behind a show turns out here to be a godsend. This allows “Comeback” co-creators Kudrow and Michael Patrick King (“Sex and the City”) to deftly switch perspectives, compress time and liven up the storytelling with tricks such as “confessionals” to the camera. But the crucial through-line is Kudrow on screen as Valerie. She not only gets to ache great as the fragile little fool but then has to act through it to keep up Valerie’s enthusiastic “star” facade. The layers there are vital, too, to making us care for this oblivious small fish willingly swimming through a big pond of ravenous sharks.

Even the more obvious industry pokes are delivered with a knowing wink that adds to the poignancy of Valerie’s plight. Not everyone could pull off a wittily detailed parody of a network proudly announcing its new reality offering “America’s Next Great Porn Star,” but Kudrow and King (who also directed the first two half-hours) cannily make it juicy. Their observations are pointed but not razor-sharp. This allows “The Comeback” to position itself first and foremost as a character portrait, even more so than HBO’s Sunday night lead-in, “Entourage” (returning this week for a second season). Satiric aspirations are fulfilled, yet they’re given a warm glow thanks to Kudrow’s affecting portrayal and King’s obvious affection for the medium.

They don’t loathe mainstream TV. They just don’t like the way it operates these days. We can relate.