Jane Raab Movies
Originally slated to premiere on November 27, 2007, then held back until December 4, the hour-long dramedy Cashmere Mafia finally made its ABC debut on January 6, 2008. The series focused on a quartet of highly successful female executives, friends since their days in business college, who continued to meet, compare notes, and advise and console one another in various expensive Manhattan restaurants and watering holes. Miranda Otto played the "anchor" of the group, Juliet Draper, the powerful COO of the Stanton Hall hotel chain, who wryly observed the passing scene, dispensed sage wisdom, and merrily dissed most of the males who crossed her path--with the occasional exception of her husband Davis (Peter Hermann). Lucy Liu costarred as Mia Mason, high-powered functionary at Barnstead Media, a publishing firm run by a Murdoch clone; Mia was so ambitious that she was even willing to sacrifice her love life for her career, maneuvering her own fiancee out of the job she finally grabbed for herself. Frances O'Connor played Zoe Burden, senior marketing VP for Lily Parish cosmetics, who after several dead-end heterosexual romances suddenly found herself attracted to another woman, Alicia Lawson (Lourdes Benedicto). And Bonnie Somerville appeared as Zoe Burden, managing director of mergers and acquisitions at the investment firm of Gorham Sutter, who encountered considerable difficulty juggling her career and her private life with her stay-at-home husband Eric (Julian Ovenden) and twin children Luke (Nicholas Reese Art) and Sasha (Peyton List). Also in the cast was Addison Timlin as Juliet and Davis' mildly rebellious 14-year-old daughter Emily. If Cashmere Mafia seemed to be an upscale variation of HBO's Sex and the City, it may have been because it was executive-produced by former Sex and the City producer Darren Star. The ABC series also bore a marked resemblance to Lipstick Jungle, a novel written by Starr's onetime Sex and the City partner Candace Bushnell; ironically, the TV-series version of Lipstick Jungle made its NBC bow some four weeks after Cashmere Mafia's inaugural episode. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lucy Liu, Frances O'Connor, (more)
- 2007
The Bad Old Days of Dallas and Dynasty were gloriously resurrected in this over-the-top ABC drama series about the impossibly wealthy, incredibly dysfunctional Darling family of New York. After the death of his father Dutch George (Trevor St. John) in a suspicious plane crash, straight-arrow attorney Nick George (Peter Krause) inherited the responsibility of looking after the Darlings--a job that largely consisted of keeping their names out of print and the family members out of prison. Actually, Nick was bribed into assuming his new responsibilities by patriarch Tripp Darling (Donald Sutherland), who offered the young attorney a $10 million annual retainer. Nick accepted only on condition that he never be required to tell lies on the family's behalf (something his less ethical father had no qualms about). Even so, it seemed at times that Nick would be corrupted in spite of himself, and the possibility of this occuring put something of a strain on the relationships between Nick, his wife Lisa (Zoe McLellan), and their impressionable daughter Kiki (Chloe Moretz). To be sure, the Darlings were quite a piece of work. Despite his protestations of respectability and fidelity, Tripp had no qualms about cheating on his imperious wife Letitia (Jill Clayburgh) with her ex-friend Natalie (Tamara Feldman). Their eldest son Patrick (William Baldwin) found his political aspirations threatened by his affair with transgendered Carmelita (Candis Cayne). Another son, Rev. Brian Darling (Glenn Fitzgerald), was saddled with an illegitimate child and weighed down by a long-standing hatred for the comparatively virtuous Nick. Daughter Karen, an unregenerate boozehound, loved to tell everyone within earshot (including her various husbands) that she had lost her virginity to Nick years earlier. And as for twin siblings Juliet (Samaire Armstrong) and Jeremy (Seth Gabel), she was a spoiled-brat pill-popper with vague aspirations of movie stardom, while he was an overage slacker with a gift for wreaking havoc and destruction wherever he went. Incredibly, there were even worse examples of humanity on the series, notably Tripp Darling's deadly rival Simon Elder (Blair Underwood). Dirty Sexy Money premiered September 26, 2007. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 2006
Another Law & Order spin-off from producer Dick Wolf, NBC's weekly, hour-long Conviction starred Stephanie March, recreating her familiar Law & Order: SVU role as Assistant DA Alexandra Cabot. Formerly imbedded in the Federal Witness Protection Program, Alexandra was once more able to move about and practice her trade, this time as bureau chief for a group of young, ambitious ADAs. Her new colleagues included deputy DA and law-office manager Jim Steele (Anson Mount); born-into-privilege lawyer Nick Potter (Jordan Bridges), who idealistically left a lucrative private practice to work with Cabot for a paltry 51,000 dollars per year; arrogant grandstander Billy Desmond (J. August Richards), who went to great lengths to secure for himself only those cases that he was sure to win; Jessica Rossi (Milena Govich), Nick Potter's unofficial assistant and a woman with a murky, working-class past; Brian Peluso (Eric Balfour), whose legal brilliance was mitigated by his slovenliness and his messy private life; and Christina Finn (Julianne Nicholson), who'd been working in the office for two years before finally landing her first case and was understandably anxious to make up for lost time. Eschewing the "procedural" format of the other series in the Law & Order franchise, Conviction was built more along the lines of the medical drama Grey's Anatomy, focusing more on the various lawyers' personal problems and hang-ups than on their professional activities. Also breaking away from the Law & Order formula was the series' predilection for having the attorneys inaugurate legal investigations before it was entirely certain that a crime had actually been committed. Conviction first aired on March 3, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Eric Balfour, Jordan Bridges, (more)
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