Footballers Wives is ITV performing at the top of its game. A campy British drama with its tongue firmly wedged in its cheek and a sexy cast of actors hamming it up to storylines worthy of a Mexican soap opera.

Although the final whistle blew on Footballers Wives when it was cancelled after its fifth season due to low ratings, it still managed to spawn a spin-off series, Footballers Wives: Extra Time, and enjoyed some character crossover with Bad Girls, another ITV primetime drama produced by its creator Shed Media.

The beauty of Footballers Wives is that it manages to cram more bizarre storyline twists into one episode than most shows manage in a whole season. The opening season gives us a search for a child given up for adoption, a football manager beaten into a coma, someone’s boobs set on fire by attackers, a custody battle, a nurse with a penchant for coma victims, a car chase, a stalker-in-the-making, amnesia, baby-swapping and a kidnapping. Consider also that each character is having it off with a least two others, and you start to wonder how these lads have any time for football at all!

The writers haven’t made too much effort to disguise the real-life characters the show is based on, which makes it all the more fun. It wouldn’t surprise me if a number of noses were left permanently out of joint among Premiership players and their spouses. While the storylines are farcical, the show has a very clear message about what happens when otherwise fairly average lads are suddenly expected to deal with huge salaries and all the pitfalls that come along with the territory, including more gold diggers than California in 1849. For anyone with dreams of marrying into money, this is a cautionary tale indeed.

If you’re disappointed by the lack of a David Beckham to drool over, I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait until Conrad Gates appears in Season 3 - for now console yourself with the eternally topless and very beautiful Salvatore Biagi (played by Daniel Schutzmann).

Zoe Lucker’s character, Tanya Turner, is what makes this show for me. Her relentless coke-fuelled scheming puts her in the running for television’s ultimate naughty lady, knocking aside Tracey Baldwin, Katie Hopkins and all of the Bad Girls in one fell swoop, while sporting more fashion disasters than Coleen McLoughlin could charge to a black AMEX.

Intellectual telly this is not, but suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride.

Buy it now at Amazon - Footballers' Wives - The Complete Season 1 [2002]