Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series, created by Marc Cherry, who also serves as show runner, and produced by ABC Studios – The Walt Disney Company’s main television studio – and Cherry Productions. Executive producers, as of the fourth season, are Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W. Perkins, John Pardee and Joey Murphy.

The setting of the show is the street of Wisteria Lane in the fictional American town of Fairview. It follows the lives of a group of women, seen through the eyes of their dead neighbor, as they work through domestic struggles and family life, while facing the secrets, crimes and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their – at the surface – beautiful suburban neighborhood. The show features an ensemble cast, headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross as Bree Hodge, Eva Longoria Parker as Gabrielle Solis, and Nicollette Sheridan as Edie Britt. Brenda Strong narrates the show as the deceased Mary Alice Young.

The show was one of the biggest successes of the 2004–2005 television season, being well-received by both critics and viewers. The pilot episode had 21.3 million viewers making it the best new drama for the year, the highest rated show of the week, and the best performance by a pilot for ABC, since Spin City in 1996.

Along with Lost, Desperate Housewives was credited to have turned around ABC’s declining fortunes. Many critics agreed to Cherry’s initial comparison to the popular black comedy film American Beauty, while its themes and appeal to female viewers was compared to those of the award winning TV show Sex and the City, and the mysteries was said to resemble those of David Lynch’s classic TV series Twin Peaks.In its first review, USA Today proclaimed the show to be “refreshingly original, bracingly adult and thoroughly delightful” and naming it to be “sort of Knots Landing meets The Golden Girls by way of Twin Peaks”.

Following the initial success of the show, the term “desperate housewives” became a cultural phenomenon. This warranted “real life desperate housewives” features in TV shows, including The Dr. Phil Show, and in magazines. Among the more prominent names to declare themselves fans of the show were Oprah Winfrey,[64] who also dedicated an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show to her visit at the film set; and the First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush, who, in a speech during a dinner with White House Correspondents' Association on April 30, 2005, stated “Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife”, referring to the show.

The show ended up being the fourth most watched in the United States during the 2004-2005 season, with 23.7 million viewers each week