After taking America by storm, drama Army Wives invades primetime here with a cast including former NYPD Blue and CSI Miami star Kim Delaney. Joanna Hunkin reports
KEY POINTS:
After eight years on the hard-hitting police drama NYPD Blue, followed by a season on the gruesome crime series CSI: Miami, Kim Delaney has developed a taste for gritty drama.
So it seemed slightly odd the award-winning actress would sign up for a show billed by many media as "Desperate Housewives on an Army base".
But the series has little in common with Marc Cherry's dark comedic soap opera. Instead it deals with serious issues like domestic violence, post-traumatic stress disorder and war. Delaney says the comparison was made before people had watched the series, and was based on two superficial connections - both series had the words "wives" in the title and both centred around a core cast of women.
"I don't want to say that it's heavier because it's not," she says. "There's actually joyful moments. It's funny. It's romantic. It's tragic. It's about real life."
The series focuses on the stresses of military life for spouses and the camaraderie between five of those sharing a common bond: the soldiers they love.
After years in the "boys' club" that was NYPD Blue, Delaney is enjoying working with the female-dominated cast, though says the show is not just for women.
"A lot of men make up our audience and love the show," she says.
Set on an army base, there are also plenty of male supporting characters, she adds.
"There's my husband [played by] Brian McNamara and Drew Fuller, who plays Roxy's husband Trevor. Beside the Tribe - the four women and Roland [the army husband] - you have all our spouses who come in and out of the episodes."
Delaney became involved in the project after reading Tanya Biank's non-fiction book Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage, on which the series is based.
Producers also brought on military consultants to make the series realistic, capturing the culture of life on a base and the stresses of being a military family.
Producer Mark Gordon (Grey's Anatomy) thinks the series' success lies in that domestic focus, rather than following the stories of soldiers at war, as other failed series have attempted to do.
"There have always been stories about the home front during war," he says. "But we haven't seen anything really about what's going on today with the women and men whose husbands or wives are in the military here at home or overseas.
"Over There [US show that followed Iraq-based soldiers] was a great series, but most people have a harder time relating to what's going on over there than they do to what's going on over here."
Not only has the series captured the public's attention, becoming the highest rating series ever to screen on America's Lifetime network, it has earned the full support of the military community, according to Delaney.
"The first season they only half supported us as they hadn't seen the show and didn't really know how it would work. But now we're in our second season, we have their full support."
Real-life army wives regularly thank Delaney and her castmates for telling their stories and highlighting the tensions of military life.
"It's amazing how passionate they are about what their spouses do," Delaney says. "The army wives all take care of each other, but there is a code... a pecking order."
While Delaney's character would be at the top of that order, Sally Pressman's Roxy LeBlanc is somewhere near the bottom.
But the 25-year-old newcomer gives a standout performance in the series as the sassy Southern mother-of-two who is newly wedded to her soldier boy after knowing him for only a few days.
"She's really the audience's window into the world," Pressman says of LeBlanc, "because she knows just as little as anyone else would."
One thing that window does not extend to, however, is the controversy surrounding America's involvement in Iraq, something neither Gordon nor Delaney will be drawn on.
"Whether you believe in the war or you don't believe in the war, our show is not in any way political," says the producer.
Delaney gives an equally innocuous answer. "We are very respectful of the military," she says before steering the conversation away from the subject.
Too gritty a topic, even for Delaney.
LOWDOWN
Who: Kim Delaney
Born: November 29, 1958, Philadelphia
What: Stars as Claudia Joy Holden, alongside fellow army wives Denise Sherwood (Catherine Bell), Roxy LeBlanc (Sally Pressman), Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh), and army husband Dr Roland Burton (Sterling K. Brown)
Based on: The non-fiction book Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage by Tanya Biank
When: Thursdays, 8.30pm, TV2
- Additional reporting AP
