The wonderful payoff of “American Idol”–it’s the most successful reality show, with record deals and American Music Awards all tallied–is that the show finds actual talent amid all those “Gong Show” rejects and braying, overtanned blondes tarted up like porn stars. FOX’s new reality series, “My Bare Lady,” which debuted last night on the FOX Reality channel, reverses that formula by looking for a payoff even more wonderful: The show takes a group of actual porn stars and tries to turn them into legitimate talent.

They don’t succeed, of course, and one suspects the real point is to revel in the awfulness of Chanel St. James, Kirsten Price, Sasha Knox and Nautica Thorn (stars of such films as “Fashionably Laid,” “Good Girls Doing Bad Things” and “Hand to Mouth”) as they audition and vie for a spot in the cast of a London production of “The Cherry Orchard.”

While it’s often entertaining, there are no surprises in “My Bare Lady”–except, perhaps, in FOX’s continued cultural schitzophrenia. The company, whose moviemaking arm has declared itself the home of family-friendly (and faith-friendly) films, appears to vent its dark side when it turns to television. Where on the FOX corporation flowchart do these divergent tendencies meet? Hint: Look first in the accounting department.