sheer money; Joan Juliet Buck is awed by three new shows about the inner workings of powerful clans, dynasties, and a group of crime-fighting women.(Dirty Sexy Money )(Television program review)

We love to watch rich people misbehave and we love to watch Peter Krause suffer, and in the new series Dirty Sexy Money (ABC) we can do both. The Darlings are the nastiest, richest, boldfacest family in New York, and they have been torturing Nick George all his life. His father, Devlin, was their lawyer; when Devlin crashes his single- engine plane into the Atlantic, Nick inherits the job of keeping them out of trouble. Peter Krause's Nick has a groomed post-gym glow that can't disguise his resentment or his permanent skepticism. He would rather be representing worthy causes than the Darlings. His father's funeral is such a celebrity riot that cops assume he's a crasher until Patrick Darling IV (William Baldwin), apparently the sanest of the Darlings and also the state attorney general, says, "Officer, he's with us."

The show is full of those condescending touches that reveal the way the rich 'n' famous annihilate everyone around them. Nick's mother committed suicide because of them; Nick's wife wants him to keep well out of their reach. The patriarch, Patrick "Tripp" Darling III, played as a breathy, sinister bon vivant by Donald Sutherland, luxuriating in every pause and sigh, lures Nick in with the promise of $5 million a year, on top of his salary, for his "good works." "You've got a more-all center," he murmurs, sounding like the Devil. Nick asks for ten million, and, ...