Footballers' Wives

More plot per episode than can be imagined. Higher cliffs to hang from, thicker glossier makeup, higher heels and hair, flasher cars, brighter clothes. Not much soccer, but you didn't tune in for that purpose presumably. As Tanya Turner Zoe Lucker found a role of enormous power and variety. She lights up the screen in every scene she's in, especially when Jase, both true partner and nemesis, was around. Dragging Joan Collins in for an episode or two was true to the genre but not to the show. You enjoy the gesture only for its trueness to type, not its product.

Addictive in a way most television could never be, sly but blatant and insane. Sorely sorely missed.