29 new shows are headed for your TV

Will it work? Scoff if you want, but I think this could work. Hey, if I told you 10 years ago that there was going to be this show about a high school cheerleader who killed vampires and it would run for seven seasons, would you have believed me?

Debuts: Tuesday, Sept. 25

CASHMERE MAFIA (Tuesdays, 9 p.m., ABC/Ch. 4) is either an attempt to make a new "Sex and the City" or the female version of "Big Shots" — and it's not entirely successful at being either one.

It's the story of four very successful businesswomen who are less successful in their private lives. Friends since business school, they form a support network for one another.

Mia Mason (Lucy Liu) is an ultracompetitive, driven executive at a publishing firm. But in the pilot, she has to compete against the man she's in love with. (You can see the trouble brewing there, right?)

Zoe Burden (Frances O'Connor) seems to have it all — a powerful job as an investment banker, a loving husband and two small children. But she's facing a threat from a younger woman.

Juliet Draper (Miranda Otto), the COO of a hotel chain, also seems to have it all. But her husband isn't faithful, and her teenage daughter is a rebellious snot.

Then there's Caitlin Dowd (Bonnie Sommerville), a market executive at a cosmetics firm. Her love life has been less than great, but then she meets a new subordinate at work — a subordinate who happens to be a woman.

There are a lot of soap opera-ish antics going on here, complete with over-the-top developments, high-drama moments and dialogue that no real person would ever say.

What's to like? Well ... um ... the cast is pretty good. And, if you're looking for a rather mindless soap, look no further..

What's not to like? At least in the pilot, nothing quite comes together. You can almost see the writers working on the script instead of seeing the characters as real people. It's neither as funny nor as dramatic as it wants to be.

Will it work? Doubtful.

Debuts: Tuesday, Nov. 27

CANE (Tuesdays, 9 p.m., CBS/Ch. 2) is sort of the Hispanic version of "Dallas" — a rich, powerful family fighting over the family business and feuding with their longtime rivals. Only, instead of oil, this is about sugar cane. "Cane" is about a Latino family — Cuban-Americans. Which is something we don't see much on English-language American networks.

Family patriarch Pancho Duque (Hector Elizondo) immigrated to Florida and built a sugar-cane empire and successful rum business. As the series opens, his longtime rivals, the Samuels family, want to buy his hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar fields — but they've got ulterior motives.