WOMEN GONE WILD.(Television Program Review)

America is having a torrid love affair with "Desperate Housewives," and I feel so left out. The nation is simply "Mad About 'Housewives,' " according to a Newsweek cover story, but not since the days of the Macarena have I felt this bewildered by a pop-culture phenomenon. Its status was ratified in November, when, in a promo for "Desperate Housewives" at the beginning of a "Monday Night Football" broadcast, Nicollette Sheridan, one of the show's stars, doffed a bath towel and jumped into the arms of a Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver. The Federal Communications Commission didn't throw a flag on ABC's play, but the prurience patrol is investigating the matter. ABC, meanwhile, is tearing up the field: the show, which is on Sunday nights at nine, regularly attracts more than twenty million viewers.

"Housewives" is a knowing, campy take on the mores of suburban life and marriage with elements of a mystery story, arising from an act of suicide at the beginning of the series, and of drama, as the show burrows a little deeper each week into the characters' lives and exposes their secrets. Set on a perfect-looking street called Wisteria Lane, on which every blade of grass seems to have been individually waxed (the street is the one that was used for the NBC series "Providence," and it recalls the sanitized-for-your-protection look of the town in "The Truman Show"), the show centers on four women who are friends but don't, it turns out, know each other that well. (Sheridan's character, Edie, lives in the neighborhood but isn't integral to the group. In the show's catalogue of stereotypes, she corresponds to Samantha in "Sex and the City"; she's the designated slut.) Teri Hatcher plays Susan, whose husband left her for his secretary; Marcia Cross, familiar to many as the psycho doctor from "Melrose Place," plays Bree, a Martha Stewart-like domestic tyrant who has made life miserable for her husband and children; Eva Longoria is a former model named Gabrielle, who is married to a rich corporate dealmaker and sleeping with their seventeen-year-old gardener; and Felicity Huffman is Lynette, a former high-powered businesswoman who has given up her career to stay home with her four children. After their neighbor Mary Alice (Brenda Strong) kills herself one morning, once she has taken care of the laundry and painted a lawn chair--"quietly polishing the routine of my life until it gleamed with perfection," she says, in a wink-wink voice-over--the friends find a threatening note addressed to her among her belongings, and they set about trying to solve the mystery of her death. At the same time, the stresses in the women's lives are played for comedy (and sometimes as an attempt to get two laughs out of one joke--in two episodes early in the series, two different characters are caught outside naked, one in her full birthday suit and one in his birthday pants). Gabrielle has to deal with the complicated logistics of sleeping with a high-school student. Reaching him one afternoon on his cell phone, she asks him where he is. "Algebra," he says. Lynette's two oldest children, six-year-old twins, are turbo terrors, and she has to resort to bribery to try to get them in line. Not only do her efforts never work; they also earn her judgmental looks from people who disapprove of her mothering techniques--looks that she throws right back at them. Susan has a teen-age daughter she treats as an equal, even to the point of enlisting her aid in hooking up with the handsome, mysterious new single guy across the street; the joke here is that her daughter is more grownup than she is.

Marc Cherry, who created "Desperate Housewives," and whose background is in sitcoms (he was a writer and producer for "The Golden Girls"), is juggling a lot of genres in this show, and some people feel that the shifting tones are part of what makes it original and compelling. But there doesn't seem to be any unifying taste at work; all the playing around with soap opera, melodrama, and comedy shows that Cherry has talent, but it doesn't prove that he has artistry. The show is both heavy-handed and ...