HOT PROPERTIES.

Something about upscale houses in Los Angeles, all those black leather sofas and mirrors, always makes the visitor suspect that a porn video is being shot upstairs. "Million Dollar Listing," Bravo's six-episode reality show about real-estate agents in Hollywood and Malibu, encourages that suspicion. One homeowner, a former record producer and telephone psychic whose house has leopard-skin walls and a stripper pole, tells us that he often comes home "to find naked Czechoslovakian girls being filmed for Hustler or Penthouse," and an agent praises another property as a "James Bond sex palace." The agents, our guides, have names like Shannon, Chase, and Madison, and their bleached teeth sparkle as they show us hilltop aeries and beachside getaways that feature wet bars and poolside cabanas and sunken marble tubs. Yeah, baby!

It's all a bait and switch, though, because everyone is too busy trading up to hook up. One agent explains that a client "fell in love with" a $3.2 million fixer-upper--meaning that he wants to "buy a house and flip it, try to make a million bucks." Another agent keeps postponing her wedding arrangements so she can rack up record-setting commissions, and confides, "Some people affectionately call me the Condo Queen." But only people in the lovey-dovey world of adjustable-rate mortgages.

As with Bravo's signature "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," viewers will tune in not for the homey tips--"When showing a house, turn on all the lamps to brighten up rooms"--but for a peek at people's untidy private lives. A seller named Antoinette tells us that all that kept her sane as her marriage fell apart was her house on Mulholland Drive (a dump, but not far from Quentin Tarantino's place) and her cat, Topa. Now she has to sell, and Topa is hiding under the bed. When Antoinette gets an offer thirty-four thousand dollars above her asking price--an offer that will expire in twenty-four hours--she doesn't return her agent's frantic messages. Instead, she glugs champagne from a Big Gulp-size cup, "to calm me down." Then she drives off to see her hypnotist, carrying the cup for continuing solace. Later, she backs her car onto the curb. Finally, she gets her head together at her pedicurist's.

California was the ideal locale for this show, since the state has more real-estate agents than annual home sales, so desperation is built into the system. It's also one of the few states that allow agents to represent both buyer and seller. An agent named Shannon McLeod, a vampy bottle blonde who sports a "$" tank top, demonstrates why that's a bad idea. She ends up being the agent for both parties in the prospective sale of a $2.4 million house in the Hollywood Hills, and things get ugly early. The house belongs to her lantern-jawed ex-fiance, Jeff, and Shannon, we infer from her struggle to maintain her remarkably smooth countenance, has nostalgic memories of evenings spent in Jeff's Jacuzzi. She grows surly when she realizes that the only visitors to her first open house, a woman and her photographer husband, recently bought a neighboring house and are just snooping--and that Jeff has noticed that the woman's breasts are even bigger than hers, which I wouldn't mention if Shannon hadn't. Then, when a deal is threatened by issues raised by the inspection (every inspection seems to find mold, termites, and dry rot), she can barely stir herself to smooth things over.

But the fact that she's a terrible agent isn't what kills the sale; the problem is that Jeff isn't really ready to move out. Yes, a good agent knows how to coax and cajole a regretful seller. Yes, a good agent remembers to tell buyers that Goldie Hawn and /or Charlie Sheen live somewhat nearby. Yes, a good agent has euphemisms for hideous interiors: "fun" or "very unique" or "so personalized." But we see bad agents move white elephants, while good ones get stuck with trophy homes. Deals collapse without warning, like houses in a mud slide. So magical thinking abounds. Peter Deep, a desperate seller, goes so far as to bury a St. Joseph statuette upside down in his back yard, and to offer up this prayer: "Please bring us an acceptable offer, ...