Over lunch in a fashionable restaurant near Union Square, a French friend told me that in life, or at least in social life, men come first, women second, and that is simply the natural order of things, even if it’s not acceptable to say so in today’s New York. Then she scrolled through her BlackBerry to see which literary legend had decided to text her during the five minutes since we’d sat down at our table. She was — is — young, successful, bi-continental, a go-getter, and definitely attractive. I wonder what she’d make of “Cashmere Mafia.” The pilot of the new series, which is produced by “Sex and the City” creator Darren Star and makes its debut Sunday on ABC, is very much concerned with the natural order of things, so long as we understand that “natural” should be locked inside skeptical quotation marks. The only question is whether we should throw away the key.

The episode opens in a way that frankly seems shopworn. We are somewhere next to Central Park, with the usual, gaudily seductive images of New York being beamed into our brains. Mia Mason (Lucy Liu), Gucci-toting titan of the publishing world, is feeling all femme and romantic as she promenades in her show-pony style with boyfriend Jack Cutting (Tom Everett Scott), who enjoys equal status with her at their company, Barnstead Media.

Mia and Jack are one day short of the first anniversary of their first meeting (Jack has the date wrong), and wouldn’t you know it, they’re in the very same place where they first met, and the same cute little street band is playing the same song. This time, dark, handsome Jack is in his dark, handsome suit on bended knee with an engagement ring sparkling in his paw, begging Mia to marry him.

There’s a moment’s hesitation as the computer chip Mia has in place of a brain rapidly calculates the odds. Then it tells her to smile and accept, and then the New Yorkers standing around all break into applause in a slightly on-cue way as if they were a group of extras, which, come to think of it, they are.

As soon as the couple returns to their office, romance is effaced by the hard facts of corporate life. Their boss tells them he’s going to have to fire one of them within the week, and since he can’t choose between them, he’s pitting them against each other in a “Survivor”- style face-off to see who can close out the quarter by bringing in the biggest block of advertising. Jack hopes Mia will step aside and start doing womanly stuff like planning their wedding, but no such luck. (He’s the one dreaming about the wedding.) The battle’s on, and the three other women in Mia’s so-called “Cashmere Mafia” are immediately texted for an emergency meeting at a favorite watering hole to figure out how to help Mia win it. The New York Fire Department couldn’t have gotten there any faster, even if they were driving Ferraris.

Fortunately, these other women are all more appealing, both as actresses and characters, than the steely Ms. Liu. The senior of the group is probably Juliet (Miranda Otto), who heads a luxury hotel chain. A redhead edging 40, she has a commanding hauteur faintly etched with tragedy and sadness. Somehow, she seems both wiser and saner than the rest of the quartet, which is rounded out by Caitlin (Bonnie Somerville), a marketing executive for a cosmetics firm with a slightly screwball comedic touch and a love life that never gets into gear (hint: she’s driving the wrong car), and Zoe (Frances O’Connor), who chews people up for breakfast in the ancient and venerable field of mergers and acquisitions, though mostly she looks as though she’d like to sit down and weep.

The erotically confused Caitlin aside, all three women are married or, in Mia’s case, engaged. Davis (Peter Hermann), Juliet’s husband, is a darkly handsome hedge fund manager with a jawline worthy of at least three top-tier presidential candidates, but compared with his wife, he’s nothing but a second fiddle. Another second fiddle is Zoe’s husband, Eric (Julian Ovenden), an architect who spends more time with their two kids and various nannies than she does.

Not content with the battle between Mia and Jack, the writers of “Cashmere Mafia” break out a second one when Juliet learns that Davis is having an affair. Turns out she’s used to that, however. “I’m not excusing him,” she tells her three friends in the best speech of the show, “but look at what a man gives up to be with one of us. We make more money, we rise higher, we take up more space, we are as far from the idea of a wife he grew up with as it’s possible to be and still wear a ring and go by his last name. … Don’t get me wrong, I hate it. But I hate the alternative even more. I like having someone to come home to.”

Davis’s affairs were just about tolerable so long as they took place out of town. However, now he’s been caught cheating with a friend, and Juliet decides it’s time to give him a taste of his own medicine by telling him she’s also going to have an affair with someone from their own circle, only he’s never going to find out who. The sight of him frantically draining a glass of wine when she tells him this is a great piece of dramatized insecurity. No words needed. The second fiddles know their place. Or do they? Mr. Star, responsible for that overlooked gem, “Miss Match,” as well as more garish blockbusters like “Melrose Place” and “Sex and the City” (after which this show is clearly modeled and marketed), “Cashmere Mafia” is smart enough to keep you guessing at least a little bit as to who will ultimately have the upper hand in its professional and personal gender wars. It also hints that it might be a good idea to come up with a kinder, gentler sort of gender war, given that they’re inevitable in the first place.

Naturally, the show radiates oodles of glamour, martini glasses lined up like silvery sentinels, female bonding, bouquets, product placements, apartments the size of ranches, and dress changes every other scene. But does it have anything to do with the “natural order of things,” of which my French friend spoke? The men on the show certainly don’t seem to think so, even if they’ve learned to keep quiet about it. Nonetheless, something tells me Mr. Star and co. have come up with another hit.

bbernhard@earthlink.net