Scandalous Lives (Footballers Wives)

Member Name: Greetchen

Product:	Footballers Wives
Date:	05/02/03 (1005 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's so bad!, It's on terrestrial tv, Hilarious storylines and acting attempts

Disadvantages: It's so bad!, It's on once a week, If you're inthe business you may become bitter at the talentless bunch's luck

I don't know quite how to begin my uncharacteristically glowing review, but be warned, it'll gush. See I hate "tabloid telly", it's insulting and degrading and offends my academic sensibilities. But when it's sooo bad.. well it really is very good indeed. Footballers Wives survives complete derision because it doesn't take itself seriously- at all. The storylines are outrageous and excessive to match the charcters and their bizarre lives. In many ways this light and fluffy soap is a telling reflection of the world we live in and our increasingly materialistic aspirations. It's true that while twenty years ago evry little boy wanted to be a fireman and every girl a nurse, now all children just want to be rich and famous.

Parody has rarely reached the mainstream in such an explosive and effective manner. While we are all highly amused at the flambouant idiocy of the Wives and their lives it's not only essential viewing for us, the real wives like George Best's wife Alex are as glued as the rest of us.

Like any good American soap Footballers Wives thrives an scandal and outlandishness. Like Sunset Beach, The Bold and the Beautiful, Dynasty and Dallas, Footballers wives knows that weirder things can happen if you're rich and beautiful. And we love that. They may be beautiful, and maybe they could buy my house with their small change but I'll NEVER have problems like that! So far we've had a kidnapping that, like all goodsoap plots dragged on for ever. Who can forget the Sunset Beach ship that sank for weeks or the Emmerdale chopper that crashed for a month? And of course we couldn't have a truly scandalous soap without infedelity, secret births, lesbianism and dead stalkers now could we?

So many boundaries have been broken by eager and ambitious soap writers that there just aren't any true taboos any more. The lesbian kiss Brookside unveiled is boring now so producers
and director push nearer and nearer the edge of decency. In fact if any of our main soap are near it it's Brookside, but Phil Redmond used ordinary people, and noone aspires to be normal anymore.

The actors are soap actors, and they have fun with the script, unlike 'serious soaps' like Coronation Street and Eastenders Footballes Wives knows what it is and loves it. I don't watch television to educate myself, it's for entertainment only and a keyhole into the exagerrated lives of such fascinating characters does it for me. None of the characters are fully developed but they would lose something if they were. The shallow nature of Earl's Park Football club would surely foster shallow people anyway.

ITV1 has produced a classic peice of fun that the BBC wouldn't, couldn't touch with a bargepole (if I can be so cliched). It's well worth watching to witness atrocius acting that's guarranteed to make you giggle, and is on a par a minority of actors on most soaps- especially the lamentable Hollyoaks from which Gary Lucy joined ( never trust a man with two first names- especially if one of them is female- you have been warned). Gillian Taylforth of Eastenders and lay-by fame is possibly the most talented member of this bunch and with some of the most ridiculous storylines seems believable. Susie Amy as Chardonnay on the other hand- well I'm undecided. She's either a talented actress or a real bimbo who's landed on her feet. But time will tell.

The best thing to my mind is not the outrageous story lines, but that so many run concurrently whilst the business of running a Premier League football team plods on regardless. Perhaps the hyper famous really do live in a world wher hermaphrodite babies can be born to a footballer's mother and his best friend only to be fought over by her son and daughter in law and the father. But if so, you can keep it. It's enough to drive you to
the white stuff!

Summary: