Why these mistresses are not so bad... (Mistresses)

Member Name: Jark

Product:	Mistresses
Date:	24/03/09 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The female cast, the general sheen of the show

Disadvantages: Much of the male cast, the sometimes-thin plots

Technically, Mistresses should be awful. The plot lines are pretty thin. For much of the series, none of the main protagonists are even mistresses. It's pretty, glossy, frothy drama. And yet it's strangely engaging.

For anybody who missed the first season, aired on BBC1 in early 2008, here's a brief summary of what happened. Trudi (Sharon Small - The Inspector Lynley Mysteries) was a single mother of two daughters. Her husband of many years was reported dead in the 9/11 tragedy and she was sent a cheque of compensation. A woman claiming to have had a lovechild with him then turned up on Trudi's door asking for a segment of the compensation cash. Trudi did a bit of digging and found that her husband was actually alive and well, and that the he had faked his own death to get a large lump sum. She reported him to the police and meanwhile began seeing Richard, who also has a daughter. Trudi is a reasonably shy person with money worries and a big heart; she always puts others first.

Katie (Sarah Parish - Cutting It) was a GP who was having an affair with a terminally ill patient. When he died, she began to date his son Sam; however when Sam found out she'd been with his (married) father, he reported her to the authorities and she was forced to leave her job. Katie is wealthy and attractive but not the most confident. She's also a stranger to the word 'no' where men are concerned.

Jessica (Shelley Conn - Party Animals, Dead Set) is the youngest of the group, and a free spirit. In series 1, her occupation as one half of an events organising firm introduced her to Alex, whose lesbian wedding she was in charge of. Jessica and Alex began an affair, but ultimately Jessica's reluctance to accept her sexuality and partake in a serious gay relationship upset Alex, who went ahead with the wedding.

Siobhan (Orla Brady - Out of the Blue, Revelations) has been married to Hari for some time and the pair are in love - but she can't resist starting an affair with her lawyer colleague Dominic. As a result she gets pregnant, and when Hari finds out that baby isn't his, he decides to leave her, but she manages to persuade him to stay, so long as they seek marriage counselling.

It's probably fair to say that Mistresses is a sort of British Sex & The City, although it takes itself much more seriously. It also has elements of the likes of Cold Feet and No Angels, which could never be a bad thing. What really makes it work is the lead cast; as Siobhan, who has a penchant for purple tights, Brady is particularly good. Her eyes mesmerise! Small as Trudi also has the lovely-but-hassled mother role nailed.

One of the criticisms I have is that so many of the male characters are either utterly unlikeable or total creeps. Katie's season 1 lover Sam is creepy in the extreme; her med school romance Jack has no shame in constantly pulling her into passionate embraces, in public, despite being married. Raza Jeffrey isn't given much to work with as Hari, who is stupidly cold; somebody so deeply angry at their partner would've upped and left. Patrick Baladi's Richard is an intensely weak character, unable to say anything that needs saying. The few warm males are underused - Dominic, the most interesting by far, is sadly absent for much of series two.

That said, I look forward to new episodes a great deal, so it must be doing something right. Season 2 continues in much the same vain as the first. Trudi, Richard and the three kids are living together, but Trudi's discovery about Richard's wife threatens to put an end to that. She has another admirer too, in the form of the well-mannered boss at the bakery she's taken a job at. Katie is now working at a large hospital, where she meets old flame Jack and his wife, as well as surgeon Dan. They fall in love and plan to move abroad but Katie can't quite resist old habits. Jessica is married to Mark; they are similarly adventurous and have an open marriage arrangement, but it's not long before she realises that isn't going to work. Siobhan, whose relationship with Hari has crumbled since the revelation about her previous affair, begins an affair with Tom (another major creep). She plans to keep each of the elements of her lives - family, the affair, work - seperate, but that's scuppered when Tom becomes a client at her law firm and then does his best to break up her marriage.

The dynamic between some of the cast - particularly between Jessica and Mark, Trudi and Lucas, and the four women together - is pretty special. Both series of Mistresses are available on DVD from Amazon, either seperately or together, and a third series is rumoured to be planned for 2010, despite underwhelming ratings this time around. I really hope it works out because for all of its flaws, Mistresses is very easy to love.

Summary: Worth checking out if you like frothy drama. Which I do!