Google 'Mistresses' and you'll see it described as "Part drama, part thriller ... a sexy, sophisticated and bold take on the lives of four women and their involvement in an array of illicit and ... "(text runs out).

I must have been watching something else.

Honestly, it is dross. I loathed 'Friends' (its smugness, fake camaraderie, exaggerated acting, signaled humour, etc.) and 'Sex In The City' was off my radar but 'Mistresses' ...

Who are the BBC kidding? "Sophisticated"? "Bold"? "Sexy" even?

I suppose in BBC script meetings, "sophisticated" means involving lawyers, surgeons and people-who-do-things-with-money. "Bold" means story lines that are shocking mainly for their utter predictability. As for "sexy", that seems to be glimpses of body parts. I'd go for "vacuous", "cliched" and "prurient". Hard-core pornography is healthier and more honest in its intentions.

Above all, the characters are so utterly, utterly boring - the dialogue seems to have been lifted from Cosmopolitan problem pages. So there's plenty of fondling, talking-about-it, talking-about-not-getting-it, talking-about-him/her-getting-or-not-getting it, and a steady supply of wine (red, I noticed, Chardonnay must be so 'out' these days).

God, it's awful. The sort of thing that made D.H. Lawrence leave England, I suppose.