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The third series of Mistresses was rather different from the first two. Gone are the glamorous wine parties and the beautiful dresses (although the gorgeous open-plan houses remain.) It begins with the four main characters not on speaking terms, and flashes back six months as we see what caused them to fall out. The final episode catches up with the opening scene – what has brought them back together? And can their friendship ever be repaired? (Yes. Yes it can.)
When Mistresses began, Jess (Shelley Conn) was the only actual mistress of the group, and since then she’s had a lesbian fling and an open marriage to a creep. In this series, she’s had to deal with her failure of a husband blowing the money he’d borrowed for IVF. It’s Jess that brings them all together in the end – she’s got TV cancer, the kind that leaves you looking serenly calm but not actually sick, so they all rally round her.
Jess’s husband borrowed the money off Siobhan (Orla Brady), who’s had her fair share of problems. She began Mistresses with a rather wet husband, but she cheated on him with the office hunk and got pregnant. Siobhan developed a sex addiction and was stalked, and now, the father of her baby (who began as an insignificant fling) is suddenly the love of her life. Why he marries a young blonde is a mystery, as he clearly adores Siobhan.
Katie (Sarah Parish), the doctor who helped her married lover to kill himself and then had an affair with his son, is probably the most messed up of the Mistresses. She then got a lovely boyfriend but cheated on him with an old (married) friend. But she faced the biggest challenge of all this series. Not her inappropriately developing feelings for her oldest friend’s husband. No, it came in the form of the ethereal Joanna Lumley playing her scary but marvellous mum.
The final Mistress, Trudi (Sharon Small) hasn’t had an easy ride, either. Her husband died in the Twin Towers in 2001, only he didn’t. He used it as an excuse to run away and start a new life with his American lover and son. She then married the nice if dull Richard and worked so hard at her bakery, that she remained unaware of Richard’s growing feelings for Katie. Oh, and she had a bit of an affair with the dishy guy who offered to buy her business, but Richard’s hurt and confusion were somewhat cut short when he was killed in a car accident.
The Mistresses live in a ludicrous world, where the men are just 2D drips who say things like, “IT’S ONLY BLOODY CAKE, TRUDI!” and the women never have a hair out of place. The programme’s saving grace is the casting – the four leads are all talented actresses and have great chemistry, and they managed to bring some sort of reality the ridiculous stories and dialogue. In particular, the always wonderful Sarah Parish managed to be sympathetic as Katie, while the introduction of Joanna Lumley, who can convey so much with the mere raising of an eyebrow, was a masterstroke.
Of course, it all works out in the end: Katie and Trudi make up; Siobhan and Dom finally get together; and Jess gets the all clear. Because that’s the ridiculous, fabulous world that is Mistresses. And I wouldn’t have changed a second of it.
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