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Housewives’ Choice

by | 3rd, February 2005

‘SUCCESS is often about knowing when to quit. Programmes like Fawlty Towers and The Office are held in high regard partly because they went off air at the height of their popularity.

”Can I get pregnant like this?”

Had they tried to make more episodes, the joke would have started to wear thin, their popularity would have waned and we would have moved onto something newer and fresher.

With that in mind, the creators of Desperate Housewives should probably have quit once they had come up with the name.

The name is a stroke of brilliance, conjuring up all kinds of images designed to appeal a cross-section of the TV viewing public, almost none of which the programme itself delivers.

It’s certainly not sexy – in fact, so chaste is it that apparently timid TV execs were worried that the prominence of Teri Hatcher’s nipples might offend the religious zealots who have declared themselves the guardians of America’s morals.

Nor – despite newspaper and magazine articles entitled ‘Which Desperate Housewife Are You?’ – is there much to empathise with. The characters are all far too two-dimensional for that.

And finally the main plotline such as it is – why did a seemingly happy woman shoot herself? – is fatally undermined by the fact that no-one seems to care that much, least of all the characters.

In spite of all that, it’s oddly compelling TV – for now. A second series, however, will be pushing it…’



Posted: 3rd, February 2005 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink