I ♥ Footballers' Wives

Footballers' Wives has risen to near to top of my list of guilty pleasures recently, right between sudoku and Texas Hold 'Em poker. This is bizarre because what everything I love about the show is everything I hated about Melrose Place. Except the gratuitous shots of bare tattooed male ass throughout - this was a quality in which Melrose Place was sorely lacking.

I tend to get sick of most TV shows pretty quickly, usually because the characters invent so much drama for themselves that I stop being sympathetic to them. This is the same reason, incidentally, that most people I meet rarely become more to me than casual acquaintances and that most twenty-something gay men don't even get that far. But this is actually part of the appeal for me when it comes to British drama. What gives?

Maybe it's because Footballers' Wives has a few characters that rise above the schemers. Hazel is a no-nonsense acerbic dyke (which is how she would describe herself) you don't want to mess with. She'll tell you exactly what's on your mind before you know yourself. And if you try to put anything past her, make sure you're wearing an athletic cup. And then there's Harley - at his core a sincere, decent bloke who just married too young. He still does everything he can to save his marriage to Shannon until he realizes that she is too shallow to ever truly love him or even herself. Characters like these foil the designs of dastardly plotters just often enough to keep me guessing. And watching.