Desperate Housewives, eat your heart out. This warm slice of smalltown gothic simmers with barely disguised marital discord, traumatic childhoods, eating disorders, bed-hopping and maternal angst – all centred around a playgroup in the South Australian town of Port Lincoln. Bitchy Madelaine, insecure Danica, sniffy Pauline, downtrodden Jo and earth-mother Nell have little in common but their children and geographical proximity. It is enough to form a friendship of sorts, albeit one spiked with deliberately provocative conversational lures, needling one-liners, sharp character assessments and sly jabs at the fleshy parts of one another’s self-esteem. As the cracks deepen in the veneer of their exterior lives, this precarious network becomes increasingly important – and fragile.
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