I began this week with a conversation with Michael, a solid Christian tradesman and family man, who was concerned about how the media shaped the way we saw ourselves and each other by the way it portrayed sex on television. He was particularly concerned about the Nine Network’s Underbelly, a series that is rapidly earning itself a reputation for graphic sex scenes. “Men need to be warned about the effect watching those images is going to have,” he told me. No argument there!

But as always scratching the surface reveals a somewhat larger, subtler problem beneath. It’s not just the portrayal of sex that has the power to reshape our self-image. Fantasy story-lines centering on power and money are just as likely to undermine our characters as alluring images erode the surface.

Take the two new American releases Dirty Sexy Money and Cashmere Mafia for example.  In the first we’re introduced to the members of an obscenely rich New York family with little or no sense of social responsibility. Tripp Darling, the family patriarch (played by Donald Sutherland) manipulates the world from a leather armchair in penthouse or private jet; the Rev Brian Darling rages over the arrival of his love-child on his doorstep; and Patrick Darling, the senator-in-waiting wonders why people won’t let him and his cross-dressing boyfriend be. Cashmere Mafia is only slightly less incredible. Four highly successful women, friends from business school, beguile the opposition as they pursue their lucrative careers. Juliet Draper, the chief operating officer of a successful hotel chain (played by Australia’s Miranda Otto) places her wealthy husband on notice that if he doesn’t reform his philandering ways, she will shame him by selecting a lover from their high society clique. Now she struggles to choose between two equally rich and attractive men.

In both series the characters’ clothes, personalities and hair-styles are ridiculously larger than life. No-one would seriously claim to model their life off them. But they might be the people we would day-dream about being if we had no restraints, much like men who still fantasize about being the cool and conscienceless James Bond. Power stories are just as seductive and destructive as sexual voyeurism.

Like Bond, what makes the cast of Cashmere Mafia and Dirty Sexy Money’s are their unlimited resources. In short, their money. Think about it: what woman who has been married for 20 years could seriously consider trading in their husband for their lover without fear of loss? But Juliet Draper can because she is a woman of independent means. Money is her freedom.

If I were Screwtape, C.S. Lewis’ famous senior devil, I would advise my junior tempters that this was the real goal of this television genre. Programs like Cashmere Mafia and Dirty Sexy Money don’t exist to create role models for the petty humans. They’re too bold, too ridiculous and so too easy to mock. Anyone can see their characters wouldn’t stand up to the wear and tear of everyday life. No, the real goal is to make the assertion that ‘money = freedom’ seem credible – at any level. Plant the thoughts, “If I only had more money then I could finally do that,’ or “I wouldn't have to put up with him - I would have options.” Get them to bend their minds towards this false god and the damage is done. The scale of their acceptance, whether it be in the millions or the few thousand more a year, is immaterial. The sin itself is all that really matters.

Under the influence of the ‘money = freedom’ delusion people can be coaxed into giving up fulfilling jobs for worse ones with bigger pay packets. Alternatively they can be encouraged to add that extra part-time job with its deceptively small time commitment. The goal in either case is to earn just that bit more to afford the trip or the family essential that will broaden everyone’s horizons. In fact the result is the worker has even less time to enjoy whomever it was they are supposedly slaving for. We tend to smile on such behaviour because it can be described in terms like ‘responsible’ and ‘hard working’. But the sin is no different than if they were to go out and apply for multiple credit cards to feed their perceived needs. Avarice has found a place in their souls, it just entered by a different door.

What really sets ones like Screwtape laughing is that the assertion ‘money = freedom’ is so obviously false, so easy to disprove, that it won’t stand up under even the most cursory examination, let alone the thorough going over a book like Ecclesiastes gives it. Real life, dispassionately observed, provides enough evidence. Consider how chained to their empires the Murdochs and the Packers are. Or on a more personal scale, observe how big the insurance bills become the more we step up our incomes. Money = less freedom, less security in the end. The worship of wealth only knits a person closer to the world. It is in fact the chief weed that threatens to choke the growth of the Gospel in our lives. That is why these philosophies are buried in light entertainment rather than declared in documentaries. One real market crash would reveal the reality of the situation. But the idea is to fuddle the audience, not cause them to think. Get into their day-dreams and slowly establish ‘money = freedom’ as the unquestioned basis for their daily decisions, and their daily betrayals.

Open House TV reviewer Mark Hadley is the Culture editor at Your.sydneyanglicans.net and Christianity.net.au.