Off an alleyway in downtown Los Angeles, a door leads into The Edison, a former private power plant transformed into an “Industrial Cathedral,” with crystal chandeliers and overstuffed furnishings upholstered in expensive fabrics layered amid iron and bronze reminders of its mechanical past.

Down a metal staircase is a lounge near the main bar, with Persian carpets and exposed brick walls, cluttered with more soft furniture – upon which one is led to wonder what has happened after dark – where the crew of Showtime’s new comedy “House of Lies” has set up shop for the day.

Created by Matthew Carnahan and premiering tonight, the half-hour show is based on Martin Kihn’s book “House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time.”

It stars Don Cheadle as Marty Kaan, a top performer at a high-end consulting firm, who is not exactly overflowing with scruples and business ethics when it comes to convincing companies they need his team’s services and should pay top dollar (along with an open spigot of perks).

In this particular episode, the quest to please a client, played by guest star Greg Germann, has led Marty’s team down those stairs and into the dark club.

To the accompaniment of throbbing music, things get intermittently interesting between Marty and ambitious team member Jeannie Van Der Hooven (Kristen Bell).

With the addition of a long-haired, shirtless male dancer, things also get intermittently weird between team members Clyde Oberholt (Ben Schwartz) and Doug Guggenheim (Josh Lawson).

“They’re not great,” says Bell of her dancing skills afterward (with high-heeled shoes off as soon as filming is done). “They’re all right. Listen, comparatively, to the four men I’m dancing with, I’m Baryshnikov on that dance floor.”

Cheadle describes his character as “complicated and dark and messed up, in a good way. He’s dealt with some tragedy when he was young, at a pretty significant time in his development, when these things tend to happen to people, and it changes the heart of who you’re going to be.

“And if you don’t get back to it and really ever deal with it, you’re on that path forever. Marty, as we will see in the series, is not really dealing with what’s happening to him.”

As to how Marty wound up in consulting, Cheadle says, “I think it’s as much that he ran toward this as he ran away from something else and just figured out that, fortunately or unfortunately, he had skills in this area. The things that saved him, in a way, are ultimately things that are his undoing in other situations.”

Bell reveals that Jeannie – an Ivy League grad with a sketchy past – is no less interesting than her boss.

“She is quite mysterious,” she says, “and that is the reputation that she would like to have. Jeannie doesn’t want you to know too much about her. She’s extremely compartmentalized – one part of her life does not relate to the other.”

“Marty loves her,” says Cheadle, “wants to see her do well, sees her as a mentee, a person that he’s grooming. But it’s a real tough love.”