I cannot tell you how much I love this show. I was a huge fan of Dynasty back in the day, but this show is better. Maybe because Dynasty was about really really rich people who did something in the oil business. Footballers Wives$ on the other hand, is about the Earl's Park Football Club (soccer to us).
If you've ever picked up a copy of Hello! Magazine or the British version of OK, than you've seen the actual Footballers Wives$. Think of Victoria Beckham, wife of David Beckham. Now the lastest girlfriend to become famous just because she's dating a footballer is Colleen, who dates Wayne Rooney. She's 21, and from what I can see has done basically absolutely nothing. But she's on the cover of magazines, she's written an autobiography and now she's getting TV work as a what they call a presenter over there (we call them hosts. See George Bernard Shaw was right when he said we were two nations divided by a common language!).
The main reason to watch this show is Zoe Lucker's performance as Tanya Turner. I can't even begin to describe all the things that Tanya has done in the 4 series of the show that I've seen, but she's literally screwed one husband to death and switched babies in the hospital, taking the child of her lover and his ex-wife for hers, and leaving her own baby with the other mother! Even Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington wasn't that bad. And she didn't snort cocaine on a regular basis on Dynasty. Or sleep with her first husband's female agent.
Tanya Turner is the bad girl that you love to hate. The viewer lives vicariously through her. We don't condone what she does, but you can't wait to find out what she's going to do next.
ABC attempted to do an American version of the show with Lucy Lawless as Tanya. I don't see it. I could have been wrong about her performance, but we'll never know since so far, ABC has declined to pick up the pilot. Rumor has it the NFL put the kibosh on the show, and ABC succumbed to the pressure so as not to lose the right to the games on ESPN.
I'm not sure how well the show would have transferred. The wives of sports stars for the most part are invisible in this country. Apart from Kobe Bryant's wife or Magic Johnson, how many people can name the wife of a leading sports figure? They just aren't the celebrities the way they are in the UK. The players yes, but the wives for the most part seem to be invisible. They're almost like Army wives in a way. It would have been a completely different show.
Plus, I couldn't see them including any of the unsavory stuff that was in the show, like Noah, the gay footballer who turns to Christianity and reversion therapy to live the life of a heterosexual, or the scenes in Spain where a young girl is raped by one of the players. Too close to what happened with Kobe Bryant. Of course, without the unsavory stuff, the show would be boring.
What's interesting is that the men in Footballers Wives$ for the most part are the least interesting, apart from Bruno Milligan who is an abusive husband (picking up from where Jason left off). So far, we've seen two players have to go to a psychiatric facility, but not one of them seems to need rehab.
Still, thanks to DVD, whenever I need a fix of Tanya, Amber, and Lucy, I can just pop one in and relive their antics.
Thanks for reading!
EKM
P.S. And the fourth issue of the Buffy comic came out today too!
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