Television - Men get the women they deserve in a hot new drama, writes Andrew Billen Desperate Housewives (Channel 4)

Now that everyone seems to be watching it - and this is no longer the norm for American imports to these shores - the question to ask about Desperate Housewives (Wednesdays, 10pm) is whose side it's meant to be on. Is its creator, Marc Cherry, who describes himself as a gay Republican, rooting for the desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane, or does he side with the people who make them desperate (and gee, that must be we men)?

Technically speaking, the serial's point of view is provided by a narrator who, like Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, is a corpse. In episode three, Mary Alice Young even commentates on her own cremation. She was, we can presume, the most desperate housewife of all, having blown her brains out in the opening minutes of the pilot, a wham-bam start designed to rub against the programme's sunny, detergent-ad texture and ensure we get it that Desperate Housewives is not as nice as it looks. With Mary Alice's death, we think back, perhaps, to the murder of Laura Palmer at the beginning of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, but the real comparison is with Lynch's Blue Velvet. Mary Alice is the ear on the lawn of suburbia gone to heaven and given voice.

Our heroine is Susan Mayer, played by Teri Hatcher, out to remind us what a gifted comedienne she is. We know she is the good guy because, one, she's brunette, two, she has a job (as a children's book illustrator) and, three, she is alone among her neighbours in not being able to cook - indeed, at Mary Alice's wake, she manages simultaneously to burn and undercook the macaroni cheese. Her husband has abandoned her for his bimbo secretary, who looks as if she'd screw up the macaroni, too, but is at least blonde. Susan's tasks are to practise anger management against her ex and to get herself a replacement. Egged on by the usual precocious teenage daughter, she has her eye on Mike, an eligible dog-loving widower who has just moved into the neighbourhood.

The sub-heroine is Lynette, a successful businesswoman persuaded by her husband to pack in her career and concentrate on raising a family, a decision she takes not knowing she will be blessed with four ginger-headed sons. Lynette - in Felicity Huffman's portrayal, the only housewife who manages to look genuinely bedraggled by life - breaks a TV taboo by being a mother who does not enjoy being a mother. When she runs into a former colleague in the supermarket, she lies that motherhood is "the best job I ever had" just as one of the boys trips up a pensioner at the checkout.

But here we run out of good women, because Susan and Lynette's neighbours are bitches. There is Gabrielle who, despite her dwarfish height, is meant to be a former catwalk model. She accepts $15,000 necklaces from her husband but screws the gardener when he's out. There is Edie, the trampish, twice-divorced man-eater who is Susan's ruthless rival for Mike. Finally, we must consider the strangely named Bree, accused by her son of running for "mayor of Stepford". She makes basil puree for soup and osso bucco for entree even as her family pleads for normal food. Her husband wants both a divorce and to know why her hair never moves.

And what of these men? With the exception of Bree's husband, Rex, they may well be worse than the desperate housewives they created. We have the philanderer who "followed my heart" and left Susan; the cheery account executive who keeps Lynette pregnant but has no idea how to look after his kids; and Carlos, husband to Gabrielle, who wept when he proposed to her but only because he weeps every time he closes a deal. More worrying still are Mary Alice's relic, Paul, who has a dark secret in a chest buried beneath the swimming pool (could it contain a child's corpse?), and an eligible new neighbour who, judging by the charts in his closet, may be working for the CIA or worse.

You have to admire the execution of this. If you are a bloke, these plot strands may enthral you more than the housewifery moaning - although, you'll admit, the moaning is well written. Susan, for instance, recalls how her husband, making his exit, declared that most men live lives of quiet desperation. "Oh really," she replied, "and most women live lives of noisy fulfilment." (The Thoreau quotation is not the only evidence of the show's literacy: the opening titles quote Vermeer, Grant Wood and Lichtenstein.) The broader comedy, I could do without. A man cannot collapse at a restaurant without dragging the tablecloth with him, nor a woman leave her house naked without falling into a bush. But at least Desperate Housewives is not another crime procedural, or not yet.

Mary Alice's voice-over follows a fad in television right now. Carrie's columns in Sex and the City started it, and Ron Howard's plot summaries followed in Arrested Development. But Mary Alice's knowing, godlike commentary makes this a cold series to watch. From the lofty perspective of a woman who has self- actualised through suicide, she mocks everyone, men, women and viewers, whom she teases by withholding plot information. Her oneiric self-help homilies are not very pleasant, but they fit. Desperate Housewives is ordinary life as viewed through an overdose of Valium.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website