Pilot Watch: Cashmere Mafia

BuzzSugar — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:30:03 -0800

With several new series set to premiere this Winter, I'm resurrecting my occasional pilot watch feature to share my first impressions of the upcoming shows. First up is the highly anticipated ABC series Cashmere Mafia, which premieres this Sunday, Jan. 6, before moving to its regular Wednesday time slot.

What's it about? Four business-school friends turned powerful New Yorkers conquer the boardroom and the bedroom.

Who's in it? Lucy Liu, Miranda Otto, Bonnie Somerville, Frances O'Connor

The good: The show has its roots in Sex and The City, with writer Darren Star serving as the show's executive producer, so that's not a bad pedigree for another series about female friendships. The pilot has a few genuinely funny moments, especially from Somerville and Otto, the latter of whom looks and acts like a junior Bree (Van de Kamp) Hodge. The outfits from SaTC costume designer Patricia Field are alternately brilliant and horrible, but at least they're never dull.

The bad: The first episode introduces far too many convenient plot lines to make a coherent story: There's an engagement, then a broken engagement; an affair, its discovery, and revenge; a nanny introduced and quickly dropped; a lesbian plot line that evolves from a quick glance to a kiss in mere minutes. It's so frenetic and covers so much ground that when one character said "I'm late," I half expected the next line to be "I'm due in June; the baby's yours." (The second episode calms that pace down somewhat.) The show is supposed to be about the characters' office lives, but after two episodes, I still didn't know what three of them actually did. And, maybe worst of all, the four main characters don't have the easy chemistry of the SaTC ladies or even the Desperate Housewives.

Will I watch? Well, there's not much else on, so why not? Honestly, though, the second episode was a bit better than the first - though still not great - and so I suppose I'll give it a few more shots. The show only completed seven episodes before the strike started, so it's not a huge commitment.

To check out a preview and a gallery of photos, just read more.

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Cashmere Mafia Has Nothing to do with Sweater Sets!

PopSugar — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:22:17 -0700

At ABC's TCAs Sex and the City creator Darren Star was asked the obvious over and over again. His new show includes Miranda Otto, Frances O'Connor, Bonnie Somerville and Lucy Liu as his new dream foursome in the mid season guilty pleasure, Cashmere Mafia. Yes, the cast has four beautiful women living in NYC but he promises this show is different than that Sex show we all can't stop talking about. He also addressed the movie rumors (sort of) and how this show is a lot like that other one called Lipstick Jungle based on the book by his good friend who also wrote SATC. Here are highlights:

Difference between CM and SATC:
"This is a show that examines women from the point of view of women in business and the particular challenges they face as career women. SATC is a comedy about sex.... the shows are looking at women from two different points of view."
When asked for any teasers about the SATC movie Darren joked:
"It features four women." He then went on to only say, that there is a script and it's in the form of pre-production so at least that is more evidence that the movie is on its way to being made.
On NBC's Lipstick Jungle:
"I'm a dear friend of Candace and I read "Lipstick Jungle" which I think is a terrific book, and at the time we were talking about it, I did not end up producing "Lipstick Jungle" and it sort of went on its merry way for a couple of years. And then this idea came to Kevin and I through Gail and ABC and I thought absolutely. I'm still very energized creatively by this arena. And the idea that there can be two shows about "Saturday Night Live" on one network, to say that there can't be more than one show about working women is ridiculous because there is so much material there."

What else do we have to look forward to? How about the adorable Lucy Liu being dressed by Patricia Field! It's hard to not make the comparisons to SJP but based on how they talked about how the designer works on the set we can expect lots of exciting new outfits. Click here to learn more about the fab Patricia dressing the new hottest four women in prime time.

To see a bunch more pics of all the fabulous women just read more

View 11 Photos ›

Images include Bonnie Somerville, Miranda Otto, Frances O'Connor, Lucy Liu, Darren Star, Kevin Wade, Jeff Rake, and Gail Katz.

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