To say that I never stopped laughing during the premiere of Cougar Town would be only a slight exaggeration—Courtney Cox’s new sitcom is fucking funny. And I use the word “fucking” advisedly, since there hasn’t been a female-centric half hour show this obsessed with sex and jokes since Sex and the City hung up its Birkin.

Cox is always a delight on screen, even when she went much darker with her FX drama Dirt. But in Cougar Town, she’s in her element, cracking sex jokes and age jokes with wit and charisma to spare. And creators Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence have smartly surrounded her with a fantastic supporting cast, especially Busy Philipps (pictured left, with Cox) as her younger co-worker Laurie. Explaining why she’s wearing fake nails on only one hand for their night on the town, Laurie calmly explains, “I only had four left. And this is the hand I smoke with.” This before she drops the younger man Jules was flirting with off at Jules’s house, screaming from a convertible, “You left this at the bar, bitch!”

I hope Cougar Town hasn’t run through their entire season’s worth of jokes in the first episode, because they came fast and furious, putting to shame Jenna Elfman’s Accidentally on Purpose. Not only does Jules sleep with that younger guy, but both her son and her ex-husband walk in on her as she’s about to go down on him. She might be apologetic about embarrassing her son (and her sexy-funny real estate ads, in which she drunkenly leers at the camera as it seems about to fall into her cleavage, don’t help him at school), but she damn sure brings that young piece of meat over again for another round at episode’s end.

Television has recently been hailed as the last vestige of good roles for women, but recent sitcoms have amended that to “good roles for women who don’t have sex.” Ahem, 30 Rock. Even Accidentally on Purpose stops its heroine from having more sex with her younger guy after she gets pregnant, punishing her, in a way, for having it in the first place. Cox and company have no such qualms, and Jules (and Cox’s performance) is an inventive comic delight. If Cougar Town actually does end up being solely about cougars and their prey (which seems doubtful, considering the caliber of talent both onscreen and off), well, there are worse ways to represent forty-something women on air. Just take a look at VH1’s My Antonio some Sunday evening.

Photo: ABC/Michael Desmond