Dirty Sexy Money: B+

The crazy, fascinating family at the center of Dirty Sexy Money is quite the small-scale economy of disfunction: they have bags, and bags, and bags, and bags, and bags of money yet hardly seem to work - together or apart; each member fighting against the other, each fighting against themselves. Such is the compelling, and most prominent feature, of ABC's new Wednesday night soap-opera. But look past the flat summations scattered throughout print ads and reviews - Dirty Sexy Money sends-up its own roots by embracing them, and manages to be way more purely entertaining than that other adult drama of the night (though, to be fair, Bionic Woman doesn't have the bolster of such a sparkling, joyously shallow cast). Concieved in an age of arch reverse irony in a visual arena too often cluttered with high concept, low delivery creations, here is something to be lauded, and failing that, at least enjoyed a whole heck of a lot; a show about a large family of eccentric, ridiculously wealthy people who never once manage to make you want to be them (and they even have yachts!) but also never once make you want to stop watching them.

Created by Craig Wright, a veteran of both Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, his final product gets a rare, and rather astonishing, blessing: it is gifted with some of the salacious wit of the former without losing a bit of the hair-pin plot turns of the former. On a scale of critical respectability, there's a sort of lucky pre-destiny in this match-up between a man who trafficked in both the moral, dramatic, absurdities of death as well as the plain ol' absurdities of a drunken Sally Fields and this great big messy production. The end result? A world where lawyer Nick George (Peter Krause) gets sucked back into the world of the Darlings when his father, their long-time family lawyer, dies mysteriously.

Except, he doesn't actually voluntarily re-enter the orbit of a clan that, in his eyes, destroyed his father - he's sort of bribed by the sort of brilliant Donald Sutherland, as familial patriarch Tripp Darling. The scene in which this occurs is pulled off with nothing less than oodles of sly pinache by both actors facing off at opposite ends of a desk - one armed with a rascally, "naieve", smile of benevolence; the other, two exasperated eyebrows and a polished, high-caliber style. This miniature delight (one of several in the pilot episode) doesn't quite encaptulate all that there is to love about Money (as that would take perhaps several, long, slightly shoddy Lifetime films) but it jolts the viewer, entertains them, intrigues them; and in a world where one is either shocked, awed, stimulated, or cajoled by all manner of reality-sweatshop-medical-drama-comedy-musical-casino-mocku-detective-mentaries, to witness a show that promises only what it can deliver - a heap of campy wit and triumphant performances with just a hint of mystery (for spice) - is a true delight.

What perhaps isn't a delight? That cynical idea that nips about the show - the idea that it may start to repeat itself. Now, one may wonder: how can a show, complete with now less than eight main characters, run out of story? The same way it can provide such pleasure: by constantly throwing new stuff, no matter how implausible, in the way of New York's craziest group of relatives. Still, I have hope. This is a show exec-produced by Greg Berlanti, after all - the man that steered Everwood past all manner of schmaltzy potholes. Let's hope he does the same here. Because I'd hate to see what a boozed up Jill Clayburgh, or a cheating William Baldwin, or a sexy Natalia Zea, or a clueless Samaire Armstrong, or a strung-out Seth Gabel, or a wound-up Glenn Fitzgerald, or - heaven forbid - warm and calculating Donald Sutherland would do if their city-wide party were to get bumpy...er.