'Army Wives' just as much fun

FELICIA LEE

FELICIA LEE

POOR Denise Sherwood. Her nasty son smacks her around. And she has just learnt that the Blackhawk helicopter carrying her husband, Major Frank Sherwood, was shot down in Iraq.

So maybe the real army wives at this US Army post near Syracuse, watching Denise on TV in the hit drama, Army Wives, would show her some love, or at least cut her some slack? Nah.

"Nobody answers the telephone that way," one of them commented when Denise breathlessly picked up the receiver and said: "This is Major Sherwood's wife."

The eight women who gathered to watch the fourth episode of the new series said that identifying yourself by your husband's rank would be like announcing his income, a definite no-no on the post.

Also strictly Hollywood, they agreed, was the scene of casually chic wives gathered at the Sherwood home, proffering sympathy and elegant home-baked goodies after the bad news.

"We would just throw on some jeans and grab a bag of something," said Amanda Downey, one of the real army wives.

"There are too many people in her house too. Usually just the close friends show up."

Despite their critique of the show, the real army wives are among an average of 3.6million people who have made Army Wives one of the highest-rated series.

The 13-episode series is shot in Charleston, South Carolina, at a fictional army post called Fort Marshall. It is based on the book Army Wives: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage by Tanya Biank, herself an army brat turned army wife. Biank is a consultant to the show.

Despite Biank's best efforts, the real army wives said, the plots often feel more likely to play out on Wisteria Lane (Desperate Housewives) than at the real 43300ha post in upstate New York, which is home to 17000 soldiers and their families and has about 3500 troops in Iraq.

The first episode ends with the army wife and former cop Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh) giving birth on a pool table in a bar surrounded by the rest of the wives and an army husband.

She swigs vodka as an anesthetic and admits that she had been hired as a surrogate - she is white and the twins are black.

The ensemble includes Roxy LeBlanc (Sally Pressman), a bartender and former single mom - of two boys by different men - who married her husband, a private, after knowing him for four days, Claudia Joy Holden (Kim Delaney), the ambitious Harvard Law-educated wife of a colonel and Denise (Catherine Bell) of the unfortunate phone manner. - © (2008) New York Times

Catch the first episode of "Army Wives" on M-Net at 7.30pm