Dirty Sexy Money: Season One

There’s nothing much dirty and only flashes of sexiness in this free TV drama — at least it cost some money, thus making the title 33.3 precent accurate. And while it’s nobody’s idea of torture, the show’s grand ambitions to be sordid and button pushing turn out to be network fantasizing. Peter Krause is a lawyer who vowed never to take on the messed-up billionaire Darling family, who stole his father’s time and life. But when daddy dies in a mysterious, unsolved plane crash, Krause assumes his mantle in order to figure out who did it. He thus winds up babysitting a bunch of seriously messed-up blue bloods, including controlling patriarch Tripp (Donald Sutherland), his freaked-out wife Letitia (Jill Clayburgh) and a variety of children, from the politician (Billy Baldwin) secretly in love with a transgendered lover (Candis Cayne) to the twins too spoiled to do any work. The show is constantly cuing you to trace elements of "importance,” as if some confluence of wealth and moralizing suddenly makes you The Sopranos but it doesn’t, and what’s on offer is like Dynasty trapped in Hill Street Blues’ body. To be sure, there’s nothing awful about the show, which has a very good cast allowed to go overboard in just the right ways, and if you’re flipping around on TV it won’t kill you if nothing else is on. But the idea of buying it, or renting it, or investing the time in downloading it, doesn’t add up — this is something you settle for not something you seek out and love. Extras include select episode commentary with various members of the cast and crew, which are very convivial but hardly penetrating, and a smattering of featurettes of the usual shallowness, ranging from acting to production to set/costume design. Most interesting of these are the ones dealing with Cayne and her pioneering role.