Braugher’s played them all - but funny? Yes, funny.

And best of all, from Braugher’s perspective, he has a demanding wife, three children, and an overbearing father.

“I’ve played a lot of guys who either they’re enigmas or freshly-minted Adams, you know what I mean? There’s no family around them,’’ Braugher, 47, said by phone. “One of the things that I really responded to in this piece is that this guy is just immersed in relationships with people he loves.’’

“Men of a Certain Age’’ is a relationship show about insecure men, built around an impressively chatty trio of college buddies who now struggle with midlife woes. It also stars Scott Bakula as Terry, a struggling actor who shies away from relationships, and co-creator Ray Romano as Joe, a party-supply store owner with a crumbling marriage and a gambling problem. The three guys gather for regular morning runs and lunches at a local diner, relating their professional and romantic highs and lows. Think “Sex and the City’’ with testosterone, love handles, and poorly-fitting sweatsuits.

Or see it as the tragicomic, wistful side of “Everybody Loves Raymond’’ - especially since it stems from the minds of Romano and Mike Royce, the longtime “Raymond’’ writer and producer. In fact, Royce said by phone, the show was conceived about a year after “Raymond’’ (1996-2005) ended, when Royce and Romano got together to discuss movie ideas and wound up talking, at length, about their lives, their friends, the meaning of success.

“We were just both in this place,’’ Royce said. “I guess when you get to that certain age, it doesn’t matter how successful you are, or unsuccessful, or somewhere in between. You just start questioning everything.’’

Royce conceded that he didn’t have Braugher in mind when he and Romano created Owen, the overleveraged underdog who at one point starts selling cars at shockingly low prices because he wants his customers to like him. (The gambit goes well until he gets his commission check.) The character was destined to be the butt of jokes, Royce noted, and Braugher is better known for his intensity than his comic timing.

“When his name came up, I did a search through every piece of anything that he played in, and I claim that there’s not a scrap of film of him ever being funny,’’ Royce joked.

But Braugher flew to Los Angeles during a day off from rehearsals of “Hamlet’’ in New York. (It was last year, and he was playing Claudius.) And in a reading, Royce said, Braugher was able to bring out the character’s pathos beneath the punch lines.

“It’s very hard to play something realistically and not go for the joke, and yet still have the humor come out,’’ Royce said. “He just played everything very real.’’

Royce said the show is meant to feel authentic, down to the story lines and anecdotes lifted liberally from the lives of series writers and their friends.

“Midlife, you’re talking about all the stuff that’s changing,’’ he said, and the notions are often both comic and tragic at once. “You go to one of those bulk stores and buy razors - like a pack of 800 razors,’’ Royce said. “Those may be the last razors I ever buy. That pack could take me to the end.’’

With ideas like that in mind, he and Romano first developed the show with HBO, where Royce had been executive producer of the sitcom “Lucky Louie.’’ When the cable network eventually passed, they shied away from broadcast networks, which were pressuring them to turn the show into a half-hour comedy. They started talking to TNT, which has drawn formidable actors such as Holly Hunter and Kyra Sedgwick to its growing lineup of original dramas.

Braugher said he was drawn to the pilot script, Romano’s reputation, and the “Everybody Loves Raymond’’ reruns he watches at home.

“We’re big fans of the show,’’ he said. “It’s carefully observed human comedy. Every time you look at a show, you say, as outrageous as it is, there’s nothing false about it.’’

And Braugher said the long and honest conversations the male characters have in “Men of a Certain Age,’’ which drift from business to love to anatomy, ring similarly true - at least, to his 40-something self.

“We weren’t trained to talk about our feelings . . . but it’s a human need,’’ he said. “Young men can afford not to deal with these things but as time moves forward, you have to.’’

And as time moves on, Braugher said, he’s increasingly drawn to characters whose struggles, like Owen’s, are intimate, personal, and small. “I do see, as time has gone forward, that my characters have more relationships, period,’’ Braugher said. “It’s as though I’ve moved from the outside to the inside over the course of my career.’’

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.