Observations on TV characters

A friend of mine is convinced, after five episodes of Channel 4's Desperate Housewives, that she is Lynette. They both have four kids (or maybe it's three, she forgets sometimes). They both used to have scarily serious careers. They both use Pinot Grigio to self-medicate if the kids have had even slight exposure to E numbers.

The differences are of little consequence to my friend. Lynette is a fictional character whose hair and make-up are always perfect, despite the supposedly "realistic" portrayal of her life as a madly busy mother. My friend pretty much always looks a complete mess, and with good reason. Lynette lives in a mansion on Wisteria Lane, somewhere in southern California. My friend lives in a semi in Isleworth.

Desperate Housewives is the latest TV line-up to present the silent question: which one are you? And amazingly, every time I hear the programme mentioned, female viewers of my acquaintance respond with the exact same Stepford over-identification that the producers are hoping for. "What Bree said last week - that's exactly what happened to me." "When Lynette told her children to get out of the car - I really identified with that." "When Susan had a go at her ex - I just felt for her." We are talking about women in their thirties and forties with proper careers and mortgages, whose lives are so far removed from the glossy silliness of US television shows that they have more in common with the cast of Emmerdale or even The Archers. (Funny how you never hear anyone saying: "Yeah, the Woolpack - that just is my life.")

Women's magazines mine this tendency with psychological tests to determine which TV character you most resemble. Flick a few pages on and you'll find a special fashion feature detailing where your character buys all her accessories - just in case you want to "steal her style". And if you've got Rachel's hair, then why not read Samantha's sex tips?

I have never known any man to identify with a male character in a TV programme. What is it about groups of glamorous women that makes us not only want to watch and admire them, but also imagine that somehow they are "just like" us? From Charlie's Angels to Dallas to Friends, once there is a group of more than two women, we are immediately expected to choose one as a phantom soulmate. The matey, cosy tones of the gossip mags confuse the characters with the actresses. We know that Courteney Cox (and Monica) had infertility problems. We know that Kim Cattrall (and Samantha) had an explosively orgasmic but ultimately doomed sex life with her last-but-one man. We know that Jennifer Aniston (and Rachel) are unlucky in love. The details of these people's real lives could not be more divorced from our own reality, but perhaps it is less insane to imagine some kind of link to them as real people than it is to fall for their on-screen characters.

It's all a gift to the sealed-off world of Hollywood PR. It has now become possible to insulate an actor or actress completely from the public, while maintaining the illusion that the public not only "knows" them but is living a life astonishingly similar to theirs, making these stars human, approachable and loveable.

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