Peter Krause stars in 'Dirty Sexy Money', premiering Wednesday on ABC.
You've heard more than you want to know about Lindsay's revolving door at the rehab centre, about Mel's bizarre and drunken anti-Semitic rant and about Britney's underwear amnesia.
But hey, how about New York senatorial candidate Patrick Darling's torrid affair with that transsexual?
If your eyebrows shot up at that last one, check out Dirty Sexy Money, the sly, grandly acted series premiering Wednesday, September 26, on ABC.
Boasting a glittering ensemble headed by Donald Sutherland, Peter Krause, William Baldwin and Jill Clayburgh, Money opens in Manhattan, as a screaming crowd surrounds the church steps leading to a funeral for the recently departed 'Dutch' George, legal counsel for the obscenely rich Darling family. Most of the crowd probably never has heard of Dutch, however, and his son, Nick (Krause), can't even squeeze his wife and daughter through the police barricades to get to his own father's memorial service.
No, this out-of-control mob is here to ogle billionaire Tripp Darling (Sutherland) and his wildly dysfunctional family, whose cavalcade of kinkiness is revealed during the opening hour. There's Brian (Glenn Fitzgerald), a married priest with an illegitimate child; the thrice-married Karen (Natalie Zea), who still carries a torch for teen fling Nick; Jeremy (Seth Gabel), the hunky screw-up; and Juliet (Samaire Armstrong, The O.C.), a woefully untalented actress who may remind viewers of another rich, famous-for-being-famous celebutante whose name rhymes with Harris Milton.
Still, these screwy siblings look like the Waltons next to eldest brother Patrick (Baldwin), a married candidate for the U.S. Senate whose passionate mistress, Carmelita (Candis Cayne), used to be - how to put this delicately? - a guy.
Small wonder, then, that Nick George wants nothing more than to pay his final respects to his dad, who died in a mysterious plane crash, and get on with his life - until Tripp makes him an offer he can't refuse: to take over his dad's old job.
season's juiciest and funniest story
It's all a dirty, sexy set-up for some of the new TV season's juiciest (and funniest) storylines, which is one of the things that attracted Baldwin, making his TV series debut here.
"(Series creator) Craig Wright is a brilliant mind, a little bit of a nutty professor and a little dangerous, all rolled into one, and the result is some of the best writing on television," Baldwin says. "It's one part drama, three parts black comedy and 10 parts soap opera. People keep calling it a one-hour drama, but it feels like much more than that. There's a great irreverent tone."
Krause had planned to take a hiatus from series television after his stint on HBO's Six Feet Under, where his intense portrayal of Nate Fisher earned him three Emmy nominations, but Wright, a 6FU writer and producer, created the role of Nick George with the actor in mind. Besides that, the writing was just too good to pass up.
"I was watching the family rehearse a scene in a rehearsal hall in New York City, and it was just so entertaining and so good," Krause says. "I was shaking my head, thinking, 'Damn, I'm going to be doing this for six years.'
"I actually said no to Craig a few times I love him. In the brief period after Six Feet Under, I discovered that I really enjoyed the television work, the in-depth character work you get to do. There wasn't that much else out there that I wanted to do, in terms of the richness of the character that I had become accustomed to on Sports Night and Six Feet Under. "
Celebrity-driven tabloid 'journalism'
Dirty Sexy Money gets a lot of its comic resonance from the current celebrity-driven tabloid 'journalism' dominating the American media scene - indeed, ABC cleverly promoted the show by plugging in advertisements disguised as scandalous gossip blurbs in Perez Hilton's online blog - but Craig insists he didn't have any real-life figures such as Paris Hilton in mind when he created the show.
"I don't read the tabloids, let alone The New York Times, so I wasn't basing this family on anyone specific," Wright says. "I was basing it on what I know about people. Under no circumstances should any single character in this show be viewed as a snapshot of anyone that's out there.
"Actually, we view the family with great compassion and (acknowledge) that they are in a very difficult position, having all of this money. The easy thing to do is blame them. What does it mean (for Nick) to be near this kind of privilege, this kind of excess, this kind of wealth? I think that's a very relatable phenomenon: What's it like to be near this and then look at yourself and say, 'Do I want it? What would I be willing to do to become, really, a part of it'?"
Blue-collar community
Baldwin, who grew up in a blue-collar community on New York's Long Island but has mingled with people like the Darlings at various charity dinners and fund-raisers, says he feels very lucky to be a part of an ensemble that includes such veterans as Sutherland and Clayburgh, and he hopes his character's tranny obsession doesn't go away anytime soon.
"I didn't have this in my own life, but I like Patrick's complicated relationship with his father," Baldwin says. "I love the political aspects of the character. That's something I've had experience in, and it really speaks to me. I love the relationship with Carmelita again, obviously, that's something I haven't had a large amount of experience with - but, you know, I'm willing to learn!
"I just thought it was different and exciting, and I'm very interested in pursuing that storyline and seeing how people are going to react to it. I'd love to have that character coming in and out of Patrick's life, at least during the first season."
- John Crook, Zap2it
