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MOVIE REVIEW
Footballers Wive$
Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD
Shed Productions
Footballers Wive$ is a British television series that makes Desperate Housewives look cliched and banal. This smartly written drama, created by Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus and mostly scripted by women (I'm pretty sure only a woman would have a male character say: "It's not about the sex, it's about you."), provides the perfect escapist television with intrigue, glamour, scandal and sex.
I had to write about Footballers Wive$ because it is so addictive that I need seasons 3 and 4 pronto! Season 5 arrives on BBC America this summer. The way I like so many UK things-Coldplay, Kate Winslet, Stella McCartney, Snow Patrol, Jem, Liz Hurley, the Bronte sisters, dry British humor, Jude Law, Merchant-Ivory films, Jane Austen, everything equestrian, tea -- coupled with my admiration for and obsession with Gwyneth Paltrow makes me consider a move across the pond.
Footballers Wive$ revolves around three main women: "Queen Bee" and cocaine-snorting vixen Tanya Turner (Zoe Lucker), content housewife and mother Donna Walmsley (Katharine Monaghan) and posh Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe (Susie Amy)-the wives of fictional Earls Park football players (which is soccer to those stateside). Their lives involve tons of over-the-top drama in the form of affairs, drugs, illegitimate children, accidents, spending tons of money, night time debauchery, tabloids and the "right" placement in OK! magazine.
I think football players in the UK are equivalent to baseball players here: the groupies, the big payouts and the scandals. The show panders to the lusts, greed and envy of its central characters. It also spins celebrity and gives us a window into these seemingly fabulous lives that are instead precarious and imperfect to the point of self-destruction.
The three wives could not be more different. They often read of each other in the tabloids. Deliciously wicked and always calculated Tanya is the core of the show. She is married to the equally self-centered team captain Jason-he has numerous affairs (even with the teenage sister-in-law of a teammate in the first season) and a temper. Whether worrying about Jason's media profile or scheming to avoid getting into some situation or out of another, Tanya is both a train wreck and a delight to watch. Chardonnay, a model, already had tasted the spotlight prior to her marriage to good guy Kyle. However, she struggles with body image issues and a poor relationship with her mother-in-law. Then there is good girl and outsider Donna, Ian's childhood sweetheart. She comes from working-class roots and cares more about family and remaining grounded than about the image that footballers wives are expected to keep. However, even she is not impervious to the temptations that one has in her situation.
Have a cuppa and enjoy this guilty pleasure. It is well worth it.
****
By Amy Steele
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