There are moments when — dare I say it? — “Dirty Sexy Money” just feels too big, too operatic, plain too good for network television. One might even plausibly regret its appearance on ABC, where it makes its premiere Wednesday, rather than HBO or Showtime, because one knows going in that although the third word of its breathless run-on title will be permitted a full airing, restrictions will apply to the two preceding it. The show, among other things, promises to teach us what it’s like to be indescribably rich, corrupt, and decadent in contemporary New York. Who can doubt that much of the material could therefore be, and perhaps ought to be, X-rated?

Taking up position as the series’ PG-rated moral center — can the center hold? — is Nick George, a calmly handsome, idealistic lawyer (though his offices look awfully nice for an idealist’s) played by Peter Krause. Nick’s lawyerly idealism is a form of rebellion as well as pro bono do-good-ism. His father, for whom he doesn’t have much time, is the consiglieri to New York’s richest family — the Darlings. His father’s entanglement with the Darling clan not only led to the suicide of Nick’s mother, it turned Nick off wealth and privilege for good. Nick may not be a religious man, but he has taken his vows nonetheless: I will not be like my father, and I will never, ever, have anything to do with the Darlings.

But shortly after Nick has turned down a lunch date with him for the umpteenth time, his father is suddenly killed in a private plane crash. The funeral is a massive Midtown affair, and it is here, as they step out of their limos, that we first lay eyes on the Darling clan, starting with its snowy-haired patriarch, Tripp, played by an actor (Donald Sutherland) good enough to make getting out of a limousine look like an event in the history of money. (“Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral,” observed George Eliot.) With him is his respectably aged, non-trophy wife Letitia (Jill Clayburgh), who is flustered. Expertly, he calms her.

The Darling brood is so all-encompassing it has its own attorney general, Patrick (William Baldwin) and its own priest, the Reverend Brian Darling (Glenn Fitzgerald), thus neatly taking care of both God and Caesar. The attorney general’s girlfriend is a transgendered prostitute and the priest is a foul-mouthed bully with an illegitimate child, but life is complicated, n’est ce pas? The Darlings even have their very own drug-befuddled Pete Doherty clone, ruinous bad-boy Jeremy (Seth Gabel), along with Juliet (Samaire Armstrong), an actress so bad that no amount of money can buy her a part. Rounding out the kid-quintet, there’s multiply married Karen (Natalie Zea), who lost her virginity to Nick and can’t seem to get past the event.

Nick, who apparently hasn’t received an invitation, can’t get into his own father’s funeral. Instead, together with his wife and daughter, he stands on the sidewalk with the gawking hoi polloi until he calls out to Patrick, the attorney general, who’s on the church steps, calmly, somberly — as befits the occasion, and a politician’s sense of it — speaking respectful words about Nick’s father to the television cameras. As soon as he spots Nick and his family, Patrick ushers them past the police line and places a brotherly arm around the bereaved Nick’s shoulders. Who could ask for a more sensitive and humane attorney general?

Crossing that police line doesn’t just get Nick into the service; it divides his life in two. Before long we are at the Darling mansion, where Nick is being treated to a private chat with Tripp, along with a sampling from the family’s Bordeaux vineyard. A seasoned flatterer, Tripp speaks movingly of Nick’s father, and the difficulty he has had in coming up with a replacement for him. (He claims even to have asked Bill Clinton to fill in.) But somehow only Nick himself seems right, and if he will represent the family as his father did, while retaining complete freedom to continue practicing the virtuous works on which he has built his reputation, Tripp is willing to pay him the handsome salary of $5 million a year.

“Ten million,” Nick counters.

“Done.” Tripp’s smile is priceless — understandably, since $10 million is pocket change. Moneyed Manhattan has rarely been captured on-screen this well since Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” when Sidney Pollack schooled Tom Cruise on the city’s hierarchy over a game of billiards in a book-lined study expansive enough to house a couple of million-dollar apartments. It’s not in that league, but it’s pretty damn impressive for television. Just like that, Nick has renounced his vows and embraced the life he swore he would have nothing to do with, even as he tells himself he’s going to be able to put an altruistic spin on it.

It doesn’t take long for Nick to realize that the Darling family is in a permanent state of emergency. If their mishaps were fire engines, nobody in the city would get a moment’s peace for all the sirens blaring. Whether it’s young Jeremy drunkenly calling Nick up at 4 a.m. to announce that he has just won a yacht at cards and needs legal advice on how to collect his winnings, or attorney general Patrick asking him to deal with the pressing emotional needs of his towering transgender “girlfriend,” or a suicide attempt by failed actress Juliet, Nick’s cell phone is in danger of melting down within 24 hours.

There is also the curious matter of his father’s death, which is beginning to look less accidental than it first appeared. In the end, after almost quitting the job within a day, Nick tells himself that he is staying on to find out exactly what happened to his dad. No doubt he is, and Mr. Krause’s face radiates honesty and an eagerness to shine light on the darkest places and bring justice to bear.

Still, there’s always the matter of that $10 million salary and its attendant perks. “Take the helicopter,” Tripp tells him, white hair flying in the wind, when Nick needs to get back into the city after inspecting the wreckage of his father’s plane. “Traffic’s demonic.” Not all that’s demonic, one suspects.