Sarah Podemski, left, and Kyle Nobess in a scene from Cashing In, the sexy new casino drama on the Aboriginal People's Television Network. (APTN)

The first episode of Cashing In, the new dramatic comedy from the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, starts with a bang. The beautiful, naked Liz McKendra (Karen Holness) is in bed with an equally beautiful, equally naked man when her BlackBerry signals a message from head office. Liz checks in — the one thing she likes more than sex is work — and then puts on her Christian Louboutins and heads to Bay Street, pausing only to tell her lover, who also happens to be her personal assistant, that he's been dumped, personally and professionally.

Cashing In ups the ante in First Nations programming with lots of glitz, glamour and greed. Don’t expect the gritty urban feel of Moccasin Flats or the earnest, plaid-shirted tone of North of 60.

An unabashedly sexy soap, Cashing In ups the ante in First Nations programming with lots of glitz, glamour and greed. Don’t expect the gritty urban feel of Moccasin Flats or the earnest, plaid-shirted tone of North of 60. Set at a gaming palace on Stonewalker First Nation, a fictional southern Manitoba reserve, Cashing In is about good-looking people behaving badly.

The North Beach Casino is packed with high rollers, fast dealers, corporate sharks, bored wives, discontented daddy’s girls and local kids on the make. According to scriptwriter Elizabeth Denny, a Métis based in Winnipeg, the casino setting leads naturally to the audience-pleasing themes of “power, money and sex.” The series’ Manitoba-based producers, Animiki See Digital Productions and Buffalo Gal Pictures, are betting that Cashing In has crossover potential. The six-part series airs Tuesday nights on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and on Wednesdays on Showcase.

“Cashing In shows a different side of APTN’s programming,” says Animiki See producer Peter Strutt. “It’s lighter, more comic. It has wide appeal, I think, both with aboriginal audiences and with mainstream viewers.”

The show itself is a bit of a gamble. It needs to deliver prime-time glamour on a bargain budget. And, like a lot of First Nations entertainment heading toward the big time, it’s tackling the tough issue of how to cash in without selling out.

Eric Schweig stars as casino tycoon Matthew Tommy in Cashing In. (APTN)

“We’re usually looking at the downside” of aboriginal life, Denny acknowledges, speaking of the show’s staff of six aboriginal writers. “And we kind of started off in that direction, because our tendency is to want to educate the world about First Nations struggles.”

APTN, which launched in 1992 as the world’s first aboriginal network, deemed the writing team’s first scenario too dark and realistic. The next draft was outsized and over-the-top, though glints of comedy keep cutting through the soap-opera conventions.

Cashing In covers big ideas like land and money, community and identity. For instance, tycoon Matthew Tommy (Eric Schweig of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) looks for success with his global casino corporation, Thundercloud International. Meanwhile, Johnny Eagle (Elijah’s Glen Gould), a laconic straight shooter who refers to the casino as “that bordello,” believes success means sticking to your rez roots.

Denny explains: “The issues are still there, but they’re dealt with in a different way — much more upbeat and sexy.”

With subplots that include a mother and daughter vying for the same man and a father and son vying for an empire, the writers are playing with archetypes that go back to Greek drama and Shakespearean tragedy — or at the very least to the fabulously trashy days of Dallas and Dynasty. In the pilot episode, big-city Liz is reluctantly dispatched to the Manitoba bush. Tommy wants her to push through a land transaction for a planned casino expansion, and he casually mentions that residents of the reserve might have some concerns about wetlands preservation. (“Pristine nature and all that shit,” he says.) Predictably, the deal isn’t as easy as it looks, and Liz and her vaulting ambition end up stranded on Stonewalker First Nation, getting caught up in the casino’s simmering sexual and financial intrigues.

The show offers plenty of eye candy. Casino regulations at North Beach often specify sartorial standards — “Tuck your shirt in, this isn’t bingo,” the manager tells one of his dealers — but this dress code seems to extend to hard bodies and cheekbones you could break bricks on. The members of the cast, including Wesley French, Sarah Podemski and Gregory Dominic Odjig, are young and dishy.

“A huge part of the aboriginal population is under 30 years old,” Strutt points out. “They want to see themselves on TV.”

Strutt also believes audiences will respond to the show’s representation of aboriginal characters who are affluent and powerful. “I definitely think this show is depicting a side of our reality — that there are successful aboriginal people owning vineyards and banks and casinos,” Strutt says. “Not a lot of content has been produced on that.”

Karen Holness, right, as cutthroat executive Liz McKendra, and co-star Stephen Eric McIntyre in a scene from Cashing In. (APTN)

The Jamaican-born, Toronto-raised Holness, who has previously appeared on Smallville and jPod, sees parallels with The Cosby Show, one of the first prime-time sitcoms to depict upper-middle-class African-American professionals. Holness watched the show growing up in the 1980s and still remembers its impact: “Finally, there was visual confirmation of the fact that we could succeed, we were succeeding.”

Cashing In should also ensure some long-term successes behind the camera. On the production side, the series is involved in a mentoring program that has partnered emerging First Nation talents with Winnipeg director Norma Bailey (Nights Below Station Street, Cowboys and Indians: The J.J. Harper Story) and veteran writer and producer Peter Lauterman (Street Legal, Night Heat, E.N.G.).

“That’s a huge part of this project for us,” Strutt says. “Right from the beginning we worked with the National Screen Institute creating a real environment for writing a script series, with all aboriginal writers working on the project.”

According to Denny, it’s crucial to develop a pool of aboriginal writers, directors and producers. “You’re building up a foundation to tell the story. If you’re going to have a First Nations and aboriginal element, you have to do that from the ground up. You can’t have a mainstream foundation and then stick a bunch of aboriginal actors on top and hope it will work.”

Cashing In is in a paradoxical position. On the one hand, it feels like a sexed-up, soaped-up romp, a gloriously guilty pleasure. On the other hand, there’s a lot at stake, as the First Nations television industry eyes crossover success.

It’s too soon to tell how far the show will go, but in the meantime, Denny says, “it’s kind of nice to just relax and enjoy.”

Cashing In airs Tuesdays at 8:30pm ET/PT on APTN and Wednesdays on Showcase.

Alison Gillmor is a writer based in Winnipeg.