Wife of wrath

BY CATHERINE WOULFE

ONCE upon a time it was the blundering husband that got all the attention in TV land: take Married With Children, The Simpsons or The Cosby Show, for example.

But now a glorious new era is dawning, and this time the wives – clever, gorgeous, and fascinatingly flawed – are front and foremost.

Think Cheryl West from Outrageous Fortune, the whole pack of Desperate Housewives and Toni Collette’s fabulous United States of Tara.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the “wife” show hits New Zealand this week. Called The Good Wife, it’s an American drama that follows Alicia Florrick, a wife who is dealing with the fallout of her husband’s mistakes.

He is a senator, who has been caught having sex with prostitutes and there’s a rumour that he also misspent state money. He ends up in jail leaving Alicia to pick up the pieces – she has to go back to work, weather the media storm, and somehow explain it all to their two children.

The show opens with one of those fascinating press conferences, in which the wife stands quietly beside her husband as he falls on his sword and vows to make it up to his family.

But this time we get to see what the cameras don’t. We see the furious, humiliated wife slap her clueless husband, we see her worry over what the scandal – and her husband’s absence – will do to their kids, and we see how his mistakes cast a shadow over her own law career.

It’s good TV, with a great leading couple: Julianna Marguiles, who won an Emmy for her work on ER, and Chris Noth, the charismatic and heavily-browed Big from Sex and the City.

The show is created and produced by married couple Robert and Michelle King, who say they act out everything in the script themselves to check that it feels right. The slap scene was Michelle’s idea, Robert says – and yes, they acted that out too.

Michelle says the question at the heart of the show is “how good is she”?

“And that will play out in her decisions. Does she stay? Does she go? How does she move her life forward?”

Robert says they started writing the show after a flurry of political scandals, where the politician resigned, cooled off for a while, then tried to get back into the spotlight.

“What interested us more was the politician’s wife’s trajectory because it seemed much less certain, much more interesting, because how do you really remake your life when everybody seems to have an opinion?

“I think we’re hoping to explore why some of these women do stay with their husbands after such a major scandal and embarrassment.”

As the show rolls on – which it looks likely to do, given its reception overseas – the Kings say the “tentacles of the scandal” will continue to follow Alicia.

Meanwhile, a new season of Desperate Housewives is waiting in the wings. The premiere signals a return to form for the show, which seems to have lost the plot slightly in recent years.

Doug Savant, who plays Tom, husband to the show’s least scandalous – and most interesting – wife, Lynette, says this season viewers will understand why he lets Lynette boss him around.

“Lynette needs to feel like she’s in control of the situation … Tom allows her to do that because it makes her feel safe … He’s made a conscious choice and they have a very healthy, good relationship.”

Another big “wife” show, Cougar Town – which hinges around Courteney Cox as the newly single “cougar” – will screen on TV2 in the second half of this year.

The Good Wife premieres on TV3 at 7.30pm on Wednesday. Desperate Housewives returns to TV2 on Monday February 15. 

- © Fairfax NZ News