Nick George (Peter Krause) follows his late father's footstep as the legal fixer for the scandal ridden New York Darling family. Tripp (Donald Sutherland) and Tish (Jill Clayburgh) are the heads of the family. Their son Patrick (William Baldwin) is the reluctant politician with closeted secrets. Karen (Natalie Zea) is the jet setting daughter who has a lifelong crush on Nick despite his marriage to Lisa (Zoe McLellan). Juliet (Samaire Armstrong) is struggling with issues (including real-life ones) along with twin Jeremy. Brian has an illegitimate son. Simon Elder (Blair Underwood) is Tripp's rival.The concept is promising but it's reliant on the likability of the characters. They can't be all be douches and mostly they're not. Mostly they're just damaged by the secrets they're keeping. There are probably a few too many characters. The show lasted two seasons. The first season does well. It has a nice balance of comedy and darker revelations. The second season gets weighted down by too much revelations. Sadly it's the usual way for a failing TV show to ramp up the drama.

I consider this to be the third best new show I started to watch last year( with Damages undoubtedly on a first place and Californication on a close second ).It has all that you want from a prime time soap: intelligent satire, adoring characters, a captivating mystery and ambient settings. I love it how they show that a materialistic lifestyle doesn't lead to happiness. In all their efforts to buy their happiness, these characters find that it is the small things that make a life worth to live. A comforting thought for a ''poor'' guy like myself.My only criticism is that the title of the show is a bit misleading. If you put the words dirty and sexy in a title, it suggests that the content is...well, dirty and sexy. But this show is actually rather decent compared to a lot of recent shows.

Having watched the first half doven or so episodes of this show, it is fast becoming my favourite programme on television. Unsure of what to expect, the show mixes intelligent drama with a very sharp wit. It is in many ways remenicent of six feet under in this respect, and Peter Krauss' performance is as equally polished as his work on that. Perhaps the shows strongest feature is its beautifully developing characterisation of its main protagonists, each revealing themselves to have more depth than we are originally shown. The strong moral undertones of the show lend themselves well to family viewing, and leave the viewer feeling satisfied at the end of each show, which is nice when nearly every other drama deems it necessary to leave the viewer with a cliffhanger. This show simply relies of its strength of characters for its magnatism. Put simply, this is one of the best developing shows on television, which is too interesting for the glipse into the lives of the uber-wealthy it gives us.

The pilot for this show was excellent. It felt like watching a good movie. I would say that it is the best pilot for a show that I've ever watched. The characters were well developed, I liked how they contrasted with one another, and the director did an excellent job making the Darlings look bigger than life.I watched the second episode last night and I was disappointed. Juliette and her twin were so well defined in the pilot, and I was expecting a repeat performance. However, the original larger than life attitudes were absence. This was also true with most of the characters. The only character who hadn't changed that much was the priest. He was still incredibly ironic and in role.My thoughts... I hope ABC takes a good look at the filming of the pilot and tries harder to capture the "bigness" of the family. Please don't let such a great show slip into a nighttime soap opera.On a last note, I do wonder if the pilot was filmed last? Why else would the characters be so developed in the first show and not so developed in the second?