It's the year 2002, generously-applied hoola bronzer is a personality trait, no one's hair is confined to a single shade and WAGs have slowly but surely taken over the zeitgeist. Enter the wives and players of the fictional Premiere League football team, Earls Park FC (thats 'Sparks' to you).
Based on the book by real-life WAG Shelley Webb, Footballers' Wives Tell Their Tales, the TV show with nearly-the-same name quickly became a cult classic. If you, your older sister or your mum didn't have the DVD boxset sat next to Sex And The City on the living room shelf, you're lying. But there's no need to dig out your blu-ray player to remind yourself what we're talking about, because all five series are now available on ITVX.
The show ran from 2002 to 2006 and followed the lives of three couples as they navigated stardom, scandal and scoring – on and off the pitch. Lest we forget the cameos it facilitated either, featuring the likes of Katie Price, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Calum Best and Peter Andre.
What happens in Footballers' Wives?
Despite being loosely based on Shelley Webb's book, Footballers' Wives quickly became a far cry from its source material. It was the fictional drama, deceit and locker room affairs that kept more than five million viewers coming back each week. In the golden era of the WAG, when Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Tweedy, Coleen Rooney and Louise Redknapp fronted every magazine cover with their oversized sunglasses, expensive handbags and low-riding jeans with girthy belts, they got more attention than than their famous husbands. It was therefore a natural move for ITV to capitalise on our collective intrigue and convince us that our seediest suspicions about them were true.
As Footballers' Wives found success, it started to follow the model of notorious US soaps Dallas and Dynasty. The show later spawned late-night spin-off Footballers’ Wives: Extra Time and even a mockumentary chatshow, Footballers’ Wives TV. The series was remade in Germany, Italy, the US and Canada (where the WAGS were wives of ice hockey stars instead).
It's since been described by The Guardian as a 'seminal slice of trash', which is exactly why we think you should watch it.
Who are the main characters in Footballers' Wives?
Being in the writers' room when they had to come up with a cast of fake footballer names must have been one you wouldn't want to miss. We've got Tanya Turner, Kyle Pascoe, Salvatore Biagi, Frank Laslett and of course, Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe, to name a few. To be honest, if we heard that Salvatore Biagi was the new England centre back, we probably wouldn't bat an eyelid.
The show initially focused on three very different couples (not all footballers and WAGs are the same, alright! They just have their ash grey carpets fitted by the same people). First up is the new Sparks signing Ian Walmsley (Nathan Constance) who struggled to settle into the team while his wife, Donna (Katherine Monaghan), tried to track down the child they were forced to give up for adoption in their teens.
Next up are Posh-and-Becks lookalikes, glamour model Chardonnay Lane (Susie Amy) and Sparks heart-throb Kyle Pascoe (Gary Lucy) who we follow as they plan their Snow White-themed wedding, naturally. Sponsored, of course, by a glossy magazine, it's a huge, fluffy, colourful event in a venue that would give the inside of a Hard Rock Cafe a run for its money. A 2002 subtweet if we ever saw one, sorry Posh.
The third couple, and the ones resposible for starting and stirring all of the drama, were villainous team captain Jason Turner (Christian Solimeno) and his wife, Tanya (who later became the main character of the show). Cue the peroxide up-flicked bob cut, the rise of stress-smoking Malboro lights, acrylic extensions and bling. Tanya is the WAG prototype – an iconic character so cunning and calculated that we'd pay to see her in the docks opposite Rebekah Vardy any day.