Footballers Wives (which, according to the title cards, doesn't have an apostrophe, so it would be wrong of me to force one on it)


The new series began on ITV1 tonight with a 90-minute indulgo-special, and, even though it has the advantage of no Conrad (shot in the chest with a rifle at the end of the last run), it still has way too much of the hysterical Amber. It's a shadow of its former self, I'm afraid, and after an hour, we switched over. Another one bites the dust. It would be silly to say that Footballers Wives has jumped the shark, as it did this when Chardonnay's breast implants caught fire in something like episode two of the first series - that's not the point - but in constantly trying to out-do and out-camp itself, it has hit something of a rut. The Pride & Prejudice wedding vows sequence was a good attempt at topping previous excesses, and had one great line (a new, militant black player turned up dressed as a slave, saying, "It ain't about pride for us, it's about prejudice") but the rest was just a bit desperate. Not enough Gillian Taylforth or Nicholas Ball, the old timers. And if I hear one more character say something insulting, then apologise with, "I was out of order," I may have to, well, go back through my old EastEnders scripts to make sure I never wrote it. Which I daresay I did.

Anyway, nice to have one less long-running drama series to watch.