Housewives: Their day has come at last

It's the new Sex and City – but with double the ratings – and it has just arrived on Irish television. Emma Browne examines the phenomenal success of Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives hit Irish screens this week, quite literally with a bang – the opening scene saw one of the characters shoot herself. Desperate Housewives has been an unexpected hit in the United States, taking the place of the popular Sex and the City, but while the finale of Sex and the City was seen by 10.6 million people last winter, the Desperate Housewives première had twice that. It averages 22.8 million viewers a week, making it the second most popular show on American television after CBS's CSI, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Why is it so popular? In recent times reality television shows and police/crime dramas have been the highest-rating shows in the US. Reality television has been the genre that produced instantaneous hits. The Apprentice, American Idol and The Bachelor are all examples of shows that were immediate successes.

However, reality television has become overcrowded and suffered a slump lately. There have been several failures – ABC's The Benefactor, Fox's The Next Great Champ and NBC's Last Comic Standing. But the British reality programme Wife Swap has been a huge hit both in Britain and the US, proving that shows about housewives can be successful on prime time television. It's rare for a scripted series to become an instant hit amongst US viewers.

CSI is currently the most popular show on US television. Its popularity is reflected in the fact that it has three versions – the original CSI, CSI Miami and CSI New York. Police and investigative dramas have always been an audience winner, but as Marc Cherry, one of the creators of Desperate Housewives, pointed out, "How many people in America are policemen?"

On the other hand, America does have a lot of housewives and they have previously been an untapped market in terms of a drama/comedy series based on them. Sex and the City tapped into the urban, New York career woman, but Desperate Housewives is "Sex and the City: The Road Not Taken," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Also, Desperate Housewives involves the viewer in the personal lives of the characters, in a way that CSI or Law & Order don't. Its success is shown in its ratings. It beats CSI in the 18- to 34-year-old viewer category, as well as with women who are 18 to 49. It also attracts the most "upscale" audience on television, the one advertisers love – viewers with a college education and a household income of more than $75,000.

For the first episode the audience was 40 per cent male, which was a surprise. Not so unusual when you see the very beautiful and often scantily clad cast.

Desperate Housewives has become a "water-cooler" show, a must see that is discussed at work and at dinner parties. Within weeks, the ABC series had become pop-culture shorthand – a magazine cover story on Jennifer Lopez and new husband Marc Anthony bore the headline: "Desperate Housewife?".

The instant popularity of the show was helped by some clever marketing. They distributed plastic bags throughout dry cleaners bearing the line, "Everybody has a little dirty laundry". A Monday night football spot featured a seductive, towel-clad Nicollette Sheridan, who plays single swinger Edie.

Although highly exaggerated, as all television tends to be, Desperate Housewives contains characters that we all recognise. There is the "perfect" housewife, who always maintains a composed façade, but who is loathed by her family. The sexy man-eating divorcée preying the neighbourhood. The lonely and dumped divorcée looking for love, and the woman who gave up her great career to stay at home with the children. Finally there is the trophy model wife whose husband showers her in jewels, while she has an affair with the teenage gardener. All are unhappy in their seemingly perfect lives.

The programme is set in Wisteria Lane, which has been dubbed Hysteria Lane. The suburb looks like a television set with its manicured lawns and picket fences; it is eerily flawless, yet as we are to learn during the series, hiding a dark secret. Wisteria Lane looks scarily similar to the set of the The Truman Show, a movie about a man living a "perfect" life in a neighbour-hood that is in fact a television set.

Another unreality is the fact that the harassed and depressed housewives look remarkably groomed and have the bodies of teenagers, suggesting that in their hectic lives they find the time to spend countless hours working out in the gym.

The housewife has become a contemporary talking point. Betty Frieden first examined the issue of the unhappy housewife in her book The Feminine Mystique in the 1960s. Since then there was a shift away from the housewife to the career woman who had it all – the children, the job, the husband.

But in the 1990s, women became disillusioned with the "have it all" life and there was a trend towards the stay-at-home mum. This coincided with Nigella Lawson's book How to be a Domestic Goddess. But this too caused a backlash among those who saw Nigella's book as a backwards move to the 1950s image of the "good housewife". With all this discussion about mothers, wives and their careers in the past decade, it is not surprising that the "housewife" has trickled into mainstream television.

Desperate Housewives is sure to be a huge hit here as well. It has been described as Sex and the City meets Twin Peaks, with a mix of the mystery and suspense of Dallas. Among all that there has to be something to appeal to Irish housewives – and men.

More Desperate Housewives Tuesday, 10 p.m. Network 2