Those of you that have suffered through the indignity of Cashmere Mafia, the awful new ABC "power women" series, should check out even just a few minutes of Lipstick Jungle to see how it's done. It's a fascinating contrast-and-compare. Where the writers turned the modern women of Cashmere Mafia into egocentric shrews, the script for Lipstick Jungle is much easier to digest and while the cast of Cashmere Mafia isn't awful, the ladies at the core of the Lipstick Jungle make something difficult look incredibly easy. There's a reason Brooke Shields has been an on-and-off star for decades and Kim Raver has been one of the more consistent television presences of the current decade, stealing scenes in Third Watch, 24, and The Nine before finally landing a series with Palm Pilots instead of paramedics. Lipstick Jungle is far from perfect and needs to do some tinkering before it becomes the water cooler show that it could be, but it's proof that there actually is a way to make a show modeled on the success of Sex and the City that works.

Based on the book by Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle is the story of three high-powered friends and how they support each other through the ups and downs of their life. Wendy (Brooke Shields) is the movie exec; Nico (Kim Raver) is the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine; Victory (Lindsay Price) is the free-spirited designer. They're all struggling with balancing career and their personal lives. Guest stars in the first episode include an ageless Andrew McCarthy as a rich beau for Victory and the always-great Julian Sands. Wendy has to deal with being a wife and mother while managing a major film company. Victory hasn't found the success she was looking for as a fashion designer. Finally, Nico has some serious marriage issues that she should probably deal with soon, including her own infidelity.

Since Sex and the City became one of the most influential shows of the last couple decades, we've seen countless takes on the same concept - women supporting each other through the balancing act that is life. No one has successfully balanced work, family, and love without the support of their friends, so it's a very believable concept, but most of the shows fall on the other side of the believability fence. Most of the Carrie Bradshaw rip-offs put nothing put snarky, unbelievable dialogue in their characters mouths and believe that the best way to make a show about powerful women is to have them act like powerful men. Lipstick Jungle dodges many of those mistakes. The dialogue and characters actually feel reasonably genuine. Now, it's not going to reinvent the genre. It still falls into way too many cliches, but it seems to have the tools that it could break free from those and actually develop its own identity. If you don't expect a water cooler obsession like Heroes and approach Lipstick Jungle for what it is in this reality-crowded strike season, it could be the right dramedy diversion for the next few weeks. Especially for you Cashmere Mafia viewers.