TV review: Prisoners' Wives

"I just want us to be friends," a dad says to his daughter as he climbs onto a ladder while chips cook on a nearby gas hob.

But once he's alone, he over-reaches for a dangling light bulb and wham! He plunges head first into the chip pan. It's nice to know where you stand early on. 'I knew that would happen,' you mutter sagely as you blow the steam off your tea.

So, as Prisoners' Wives opens with a shady figure striding towards a suburban house, can of something highly flammable in hand, it's pretty easy to read how things will play out.

Inside, we see a house full of sleeping women, children, the elderly and kittens (okay, not kittens). Don't do it, mystery kerosene man!

There's not much room for subtlety in Prisoners' Wives. If it were a murder weapon, it would definitely be a blunt instrument.

So as the house crackles and burns in the background, a rookie copper potters over to the family and blurts out: "It looks like the fire was started deliberately." "I don't understand it, I just assumed the toaster violently exploded," nobody replies.

The second series of the popular drama sprung into life last night with fire, beatings, and ludicrous conversations over steel tables.

Following four women on the outside while their loved ones linger at Her Maj's pleasure, Prisoners' Wives is just as nutty as its near-namesake, Footballers' Wives.

There's Gangster's Moll, the fire victim whose Sean Bean lookalike husband is out for revenge. There's In-Denial Housewife, whose hubbie is accused of child sex offences.

Then Grumpy Daughter, whose cheeky Irishman dad keeps on embarrassing her as she prepares for a wedding to a man so square he wears a suit literally all the time. I reckon he sleeps in it.

My favourite, though, is Fussy Mum, who attends a Bible study group and secretly whisks the prison pastor off to the Peaks for a snog, while her incarcerated son wants to convert to Islam. I wonder how that's going to turn out.

There's lots of dialogue designed to eliminate any doubt as to what's what.

"I'm getting married in a few weeks," Grumpy Daughter tells Cheeky Irishman, unnecessarily. "I'll be so good, they'll be letting me out early," Cheeky Irishman replies with the kind of conviction you only get on telly when things clearly aren't true.

Gangster's Moll, meanwhile, is doing hubbie's dirty work to avenge the fire, and sits screaming as a local baddie is shot through the stomach in the back of her car.

She lets the side down a little with her look of stunned dismay when trying to keep a straight face when the cops show up. I'd love a game of poker against her.

Soon, Not Sean Bean is coming up with a new money laundering scheme, but the rozzers aren't far behind.

With so much soap opera lunacy to take in, the sex offending angle sits slightly uneasily. It's the most engaging plot strand, but feels a little flippant when standing alongside so much madness. And madness is the word with Prisoners' Wives.

With so much top quality US drama appearing on our screens, the likes of Casualty almost seem to have no place left. So to have something that revels in its own lunacy is almost a treat.

But I'm not sure it's one I'd want every week.

Thom Kennedy