Pamela Adlon, a writer and actress who ought to be way more famous than she is, finally gets her own show, the dark comedy “Better Things,” debuting September 8 on FX. She’s long been a creative partner of Louis C.K., writing for his show and appearing regularly as Pamela, the single mom Louie befriended, pined for, and began dating. (But not before one cringe-inducing episode in which he tried to coerce her into sex. This episode feels ickier the louder the rumbles about his real-life reputation get, but I’ll put that aside for the moment.)

C.K. and Adlon have been friends and collaborators for many years. You may remember her as his wife on his 2006 HBO sitcom “Lucky Louie,” which would likely be a runaway success if it came out today. She also wrote for that show as well as many episodes of “Louie.” Could I go so far as to say Adlon is a big contributor to the pop-cultural coronation of Louis C.K., and that it’s way harder to get the kind of accolades he gets with this type of humor if you’re a woman? Yeah, sure, I’ll go that far.

In any case, he’s paying back that loyalty by co-creating “Better Things” with her, a fact that should substantially raise the show’s profile (depressing and unfair, but probably true: Keep an eye on how many headlines about the show that mention him). It’s a comedy about a working actress and single mom in L.A. that seems pretty heavily drawn from Adlon’s life. Like her onscreen counterpart, she has three kids and is divorced (her WTF interview about working and motherhood is one of that podcast’s best).

Not surprisingly, in many ways “Better Things” does feel like the female counterpart to “Louie.” Adlon is hilarious with the added benefit of having a strong pro-women streak and a devotion to calling men out on their bullshit. It’s easy to see why the two of them are friends, and to his credit, C.K. did a great job of showcasing her low B.S. tolerance on his own show.

Here, though, she’s finally the star: Sam Fox, a woman who’s been acting for decades — a younger iconic role of some sort is frequently mentioned by her colleagues — and is currently working in supporting roles and voiceover (real-life Adlon has voiced characters on “Teen Titans Go!”, “Adventure Time,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Phineas and Ferb,” “WordGirl,” and her biggest role ever, Bobby on the long-running Mike Judge cartoon “King of the Hill”). One of the pilot’s first scenes has her taking a call from the frustrated teacher of one of her daughters while in the recording booth voicing what looks like a cartoon squirrel. When she hangs up, she tries to jump into the work again but instead goes off on a profane rant that meshes perfectly with the animated character’s mouth, leaving the recording tech in a heap of giggles.

In another scene, she’s recording in voiceover the side effects of a prescription drug (for erectile dysfunction, naturally) when she’s asked to sound a little more positive about diarrhea and death. Nobody but her — and that same tech guy — find this funny. One of my favorite through lines in this show is the idea that no matter how ridiculous or chaotic your life feels, having a well-developed and dark sense of humor will get you through it.

Another is the notion of being just a regular working woman, even if her job is acting and the city is L.A. Adlon presents the business of acting, from being in the sound booth to spending time in the makeup chair to getting dropped early from a shoot, as fundamentally mundane. Her character toys with the idea of plastic surgery in one episode — the doctor pulling up one side of her face to show her how “fresh” she’d look if she just got a tuck here and there — but doesn’t go through with it. As she said in a recent interview, “it would be nice to see somebody like me represented on television — a single mom in her 40s who doesn’t look like a sparkling piece of candy. Me and my friends wear jeans and sweatshirts — we’re real people and we’re just trying to get by and not to feel invisible in a city that’s ruled by youth and beauty, you know what I mean?”

We see her in all manner of jobs and auditions, including one where she shows up and sits down next to Constance Zimmer. “Of course you’re here,” she grumbles good-naturedly, acknowledging the reality that the two of them are dueling snark queens (IRL, Zimmer was just nominated for her first Emmy for “UnREAL”). But they both know to hit the road when a third age-appropriate rival comes sailing out of the audition room: Julie Bowen of “Modern Family.”

Sam is also driven by a substantial amount of frustration, which occasionally boils over into rage. She’s very close to her three daughters (Mikey Madison, Olivia Edward, and Hannah Alligood, all excellent), to an extent that has effectively erased a lot of boundaries for her character: They barge in when she’s trying to masturbate to internet porn, they ask her to buy weed (“Don’t you want me to have clean, organic pot?” her eldest asks, in what might be the most California sentence ever), and occasionally they come to her with outrageous allegations by their dad. Like the episode in which they claim she only works so much because of a need to be famous. “Dad says you don’t have to work,” one tells her. “He says you have lots of money in savings, and he’s living like shit.” This is what pushes Sam over the edge: “Your father,” she yells, “lives better than I do! And I’m paying for all of it!”

But despite her curmudgeonly bearing, she has a soft spot for sisterhood. In a restaurant, she eavesdrops on a bad blind date, in which a tedious man won’t stop talking about himself, and leans in for a little advice when he leaves the table for a minute: “I know all about him,” she tells the startled woman. “But I haven’t heard a thing about you.” At her daughter’s school event for girls, asked to speak about being a working woman, she goes off-script and begins a conversation about periods instead. And at a gathering of friends — and her oldest daughter — at her house, she throws out the conversational topic, “How many abortions in this room?” It’s maybe the most unfussy mention of the word I’ve heard on TV.

The show’s first five episodes have a handful of notable cameos; Lenny Kravitz shows up as the slightly nerdy but still smoldering director of a movie Sam’s in, whom she invites to dinner. Bradley Whitford is the veteran actor she’s shooting a scene with whose punchline I won’t spoil here, and David Duchovny (whom Adlon also worked with on “Californication”) plays a well-known actor who works as minimally as possible.

But “Better Things” is firmly centered on women: Sam, her kids, her British mother (Celia Imrie) who lives, somewhat imposingly, across the street, her best friend Sunny (Alysia Reiner). You definitely can feel Louis C.K.’s voice here, meshing with Adlon’s; he directed the pilot, and co-wrote the other four episodes I saw. This show is less concerned than his with being auteur-ish, though; like Adlon’s character, it’s mostly just interested in keeping it real.