Girls allowed ... The cast of Mistresses
The cover of next week's Radio Times is graced by what might be known in the Daily Star as a bevy of TV beauties. Sarah Parish, Sharon Small, Shelley Conn and Orla Brady are Mistresses (BBC1, Tuesday Jan 8th). While RT asks if the show is "Sex and the City meets Desperate Housewives" (as Mistresses is filmed in Bristol, I'm thinking not), I can't decide if it's a nadir or an apotheosis in terms of women in drama.
On the plus side, the cast is cracking. Parish is eminently watchable, even if her choices are sometimes dubious (Sirens and Trust spring to mind as turkeys but she shone in Much Ado About Nothing and Blackpool). Small is probably best known for playing Havers in the awful Inspector Lynley Mysteries but she's actually rather good, as those who remember Glasgow Kiss will know. Conn was great in Party Animals early last year while Orla Brady's CV includes stints on Shark, Nip/Tuck and Hustle. It's not what you'd call a second-rate cast.
On the minus side, the title describes these women in terms of being appendages to men. Even if such a description turns out to be erroneous - only one of the four women is actually a mistress - it still reeks of a lack of imagination at best and, at worst, misogyny. I dread that the women are whiny, weak and winsome - or a combination of all three.
In fact, the whole endeavour has an air of cynicism about it - as if it's been shamelessly and obviously manufactured to appeal to a specific demographic; to fit into BBC drama's pallet. Indeed, writer Rachel Anthony says "the BBC was keen for us to have an upbeat, aspirational tone".
If there was phrase to put you off something, there it is.
All of which leads me to wonder if we've reached a stage where the audience for TV drama splits along gender lines. Judging from the last month or so - not typical, I'll concede, given Christmas - there are women's dramas in the way that there were women's pictures in Hollywood in the thirties, forties and fifties. From Cranford to Mistresses, Jam and Jerusalem to Sense and Sensibility, we've been presented with shows that have predominantly female casts and/or are aimed squarely at female audiences. Similarly, there's ITV1's Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper and BBC1's Lark Rise to Candleford coming up, which again feel like women's dramas. I watched and, much to my surprise, really enjoyed, Ballet Shoes on Boxing Day but I suspect I'm one of the few men that did. Can we thank Sex and the City for the expansion of female-centred - though not necessarily feminist - TV drama?
Was it ever thus? Is it, as it feels right now, that most TV drama is aimed at women to the exclusion of men? Do any dramas appeal to both men and women equally? The one I can think of is Spooks, which seems to have a fairly even split of male and female viewers. Are blokes off watching The Wire, The Sopranos and yearning for the return of Ultimate Force?
Do men just not watch UK drama any more? Did they ever?
