NEW YORK — There may have been enough aerosol spray to burn off the rest of our ozone layer, but Wednesday’s ambitious live version of the musical “Hairspray” on NBC was worth the environmental damage. It was light and fun and soon had you stuck.

Fittingly for a musical about pushing the boundaries, this was not a safe telecast in any way. It was shot with many outside scenes and with complex moving parts.

“This is America. You have to think big to be big,” one character says in the show, and this broadcast thought mighty big. There was a town riot, real rain, mechanized rats, swooping cameras, a real audience and golf carts racing between scenes.

Liberation was the theme — musical, racial and personal — in a story set in Baltimore in 1962 and led by the pleasingly plump Tracy Turnblad. She lives to dance on “The Corny Collins Show,” Baltimore’s version of “American Bandstand.” She also wanted to integrate its all-white environs, and, along the way, be accepted for her full-figured self. All this was enlivened by a winning score by Tony Award winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.

Based on filmmaker John Waters’ subversive homage to his youth in early 1960s Baltimore, the telecast from NBC’s backlot in Universal City, Calif., was frantic and sugary and plagued by small technical glitches early, but smoothed out and ended with a happy bang. There even was time in the three-hour show for Jennifer Hudson and Ariana Grande to duet.

Harvey Fierstein provided a new teleplay and seized back the padded dress of Tracy’s mom. He had played the role on Broadway, taking it from Divine in the original film, but lost it to John Travolta in a 2007 film remake.