KEY POINTS:
For those who can't wear 10cm heels, even lying down, along comes another show telling us the glamour zone of Manhattan is off-limits.
Cashmere Mafia (TV2, 8.30pm, Monday) is about four fashionable female friends in New York, whose careers are as towering as their high-rise footwear. Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, this is a drama, not a comedy, so it's like Sex and the City without the benefit of the gay scriptwriters. This makes the quality of the bitch dialogue vastly inferior.
An example: "You don't want to know what I know about you," snarls an enemy of one of our gang. "You don't want to know what I know about you," she spits back. Hmmm.
The show appears to have also taken a leaf out of the Desperate Housewives book, think Desperate Career Women who want to have it all, but again without the campy knowingness of its role model. And the fashions are there, but CM's script is more K-Mart than Dior.
They may be swathed in silk and cashmere, but you have to ask what a couple of fine Aussie actresses are doing in trash like this. Frances O'Connor and Miranda Otto appear to have succumbed to the "I'll do anything to work in America" syndrome.
The congenial O'Connor has no problems playing the caring wife and mother side of her role. But it's hard to accept her character Zoe morphing into a Wall St Warrior a la Gordon Gecko, spouting such terrible old toffee as "Profit doesn't care if you've got a penis or a vagina ... it only cares if you've got a hot hand". Yes, it really is that bad.
Meanwhile, Otto's character Juliette, the "Queen of Gracious Living", is so full of smarm you can understand why hubby is always slipping out for his extra-marital activities. He would merely have to slide on the oil slick out the door.
Former Charlie's Angel and Ally McBeal-er Lucy Liu is the narrator that now appears a compulsory feature of every American soap. She plays Mia Mason, a supposedly top publisher despite the handicap of being dressed in sleeves so puffed up and complex they deserve a storyline in their own right. Their extraordinary frills, pleats and folds makes you think there's a fulltime origami artist working in wardrobe.
Mia tells us in the intro that it's "the secrets behind our success that are the real stories". But the storylines of women with top jobs leaving them lovelorn are so cliched they merely leave you open to distractions, like the sleeves.
There is some entertainment, however, in the last of the quartet, Caitlin (Bonnie Somerville), embarking on a sizzling lesbian affair and playing it like a schoolgirl crush which has strayed in from a teen drama. With a few more storylines like that, Cashmere Mafia might manage to at least make it as a drama so bad it's good.
But so far it seems like a missed opportunity for a mad, bad drama about a bunch of Blackberry-loving tarts.
If only their mouths were as sharp as their heels.
