“The Good Wife” begins where sex scandals usually end: an errant politician expressing regret at a news conference while his shell-shocked spouse stands frozen at his side.

Julianna Margulies plays Alicia Florrick, another nice-looking woman in a good suit and pearls whose life blows up when her husband is caught on tape in a sexually and ethically compromising position. Her husband is Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), an Illinois state’s attorney who is accused of misusing public money.

This all too timely drama begins on Tuesday on CBS, but the script was written before Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested on corruption charges last year, so it was serendipity, or an informed guess, that set the story in Chicago. There have been so many of these tableaus of shattered public life: Silda Spitzer and Jenny Sanford are two recent symbols of wifely humiliation and endurance; Elizabeth Edwards’s ordeal never seems to end. Experience — and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s résumé — suggest that those wounds can heal. But there’s nothing quite as luridly fascinating as political disgrace in free fall.

The opening scene, which times the pace and soundtrack to the pounding heartbeat of Alicia’s shock and her sense of surreal detachment, is as vivid a depiction of personal crisis as any on television. But after this cleverly written series deconstructs the exact moment when everything falls apart, it imaginatively explores how one scorned spouse struggles to get past a life-shattering scandal. The heroine’s ripped-from-the-tabloids melodrama is also woven into a layered legal drama filmed in the sleek, elliptical style of “Damages,” though with fewer confusing flashbacks. Alicia’s past keeps intruding on her wobbly efforts to forge a new career, but each case she takes on has its own narrative and attendant subplots and courtroom finesses. Peter is behind bars seeking to overturn his conviction. Alicia, who has stacks of legal bills to pay and two children (Grace and Zach) to raise, goes back to work as a junior associate at a high-powered law firm after 13 years as a wife, mother and helpmate. Work is part of the recovery process, but her office life comes with strife all its own. Alicia has to deflect the haughty patronage and masked insecurities of Diane, the only woman who is a partner at the firm, played by the wonderful Christine Baranski. And she has to compete with Cary, a smarmy young rival played with James Spaderish suavity by Matt Czuchry (“Gilmore Girls” ), for the one associate job up for grabs. Cary congratulates Alicia on her first assignment: a no-win pro bono case. “I interned last summer at the Innocence Project, my dad’s best friend is Barry Scheck, and it was amazing,” Cary says. Alicia’s connections are not an asset. Judges, former cronies and Peter’s successor all know and dislike her husband. Alicia’s own feelings are slowly decrypted. She visits Peter in prison, but coldly, her rage so tightly bottled that it almost vibrates. Peter, still thinking he can fix the mess, keeps assuring her that he is innocent — of charges of abuse of office. “They are playing a tape in Grace’s computer lab of you sucking the toes of a hooker,” Alicia hisses at him. “You think I care about the small print of your employment contract?”

Mr. Noth portrays Peter neither as a monster nor a victim, but as a shrewd, charismatic politician who did dumb things with reckless insensitivity to other people’s feelings. Cut off in prison from the creditors, wisecracks and viral Web sites, Peter still believes he can get his old life back. Alicia, who knows better, is a changed woman, but not necessarily for the worse. She has a sense of humor about most things and has learned not to flinch at the nagging of her well-intentioned mother-in-law or the pity of ill-intentioned colleagues, the kind who ask her how she is doing, and before she can reply, add, “If it were me, I’d be curled up in a ball somewhere.”

Television dramas rarely do very well with the underbelly of politics; “The Wire,” on HBO, was a brilliant exception. “The West Wing” idealized the White House, “Spin City” affectionately spoofed City Hall, but mostly politicians are typecast as cads and criminal suspects on shows like “Law & Order.” “The Good Wife” takes its cue from real life, not just the headlines, and is all the better for it. “Not only are you coming back to the workplace fairly late but you have some very prominent baggage,” Diane tells Alicia on her first day at the firm. “But hey,” she says silkily, pointing to a framed photo of herself with Hillary Clinton, “if she can do it, so can you.”