'Certainly not as daring as the flesh-flashing trailers implied'

What to make of Mistresses, BBC1’s stab at a new Sex & the City/Desperate Housewives/Cutting It drama? Well, as you’d expect from anything starring Sarah Parish and Sharon Small, the cast are all great (apart from the guy from Spooks who still can’t persuade his voice to convey emotion) and gel perfectly, instantly becoming their new characters despite being known for a million other shows. It’s the cast that might well keep people watching this piece of fluffy hokum, as the storylines aren't particularly inventive.

IVF, office romances, lesbian flings – we’ve been here before in most female-skewed series. The Sarah Parish euthanasia plot could prove interesting, if only the character wasn’t the dumbest doctor to ever grace our screens and every twist and turn wasn’t signposted thirty minutes in advance. And Sharon Small’s 9/11 widow story also proves different, though we really need something totally unexpected to happen with it – rather than the obvious Patrick Baladi being a fraudster angle which was heavily implied last night.

Mistresses’ main fault is that it's just so middle of the road. It should have been racy, like Sex & the City. Funny, like Desperate Housewives. Or all-out melodrama like Cutting It. In fact, it was just an enjoyable-but-non-essential amalgamation of all three, coupled with quite possibly the worst incidental music heard outside Heartbeat. Hopefully things will pick up, but Mistresses felt dated and certainly not as daring as the flesh-baring trailers implied. Give us large dollops of titillating sex, laugh-out-loud humour and gut-wrenching melodrama and we’d be happy.