lowculture.co.uk

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Barrack O-drama

MILITARY! Army Wives, Living, 8.00pm

Before you get too excited, this isn't the near-mythical ITV series from the makers of Footballers' Wives set on an army base and starring Zoe Lucker and Jeremy Sheffield. Though the two series may have shared a working title at some point, the ITV one eventually got titled Bombshell and mired itself in some kind of broadcast limbo where it looks unlikely to ever be shown in the UK. So, is this alternative semi-namesake a similar sort of guilty pleasure bonkbuster? Well, it seems unlikely, since it originates from America's Lifetime network, most widely known for moving stories of people coming to terms with terminal illnesses. So why is it on our front page? Well, simple. Drew Fuller's in it.

Wait, who? You might well ask. Certain members of the lowculture team (okay, fine, it's just me, but I'm writing this entry and am embarrassing no one but myself, right?) have been maybe a little bit obsessed with Mr Fuller ever since he appeared on season six of Charmed as Piper's suspiciously swishy son from the future, Chris. And what started as a joke where we bought DVDs of any of the terrible B-movies we could find that he'd appeared in is now perhaps less of a joke and more of the sort of weird fixation that's been raising eyebrows left, right and centre (for those with untweezed monobrows, obviously).

Anyway, this is one of those projects where he's lamentably not playing a oft-shirtless teenager of questionable sexual orientation (seriously, you must see Voodoo Academy, it's hilariously awful), but we're sure it'll still be worth watching. It must be doing something right, after all - it was LIfetime's highest rating season premiere in history, and has been picked up for a second series. Other actors of note over whom we are fractionally less obsessed appearing in the show include NYPD Blue's Kim Delaney and Sterling K. Brown, aka Supernatural's batshit crazy vampire hunter Gordon. And while we probably can't expect anybody's boobs to catch fire or any babies to be smothered to death in fake tan, it might well end up being a guilty pleasure in a fluffy Grey's Anatomy, Oprah-recommended sort of a way.