Desperate Housewives

9Now

As documented in Bill Carter's 2006 book Desperate Networks, a relic of a long gone broadcast television era post-Friends and pre-streaming, when former Golden Girls writer and producer Marc Cherry was struggling to sell a darkly comic series he'd created titled Desperate Housewives, the crucial advice that turned the show's prospects around was to pitch it as a prime-time soap opera. That was enough to drive the show, about a group of dissatisfied and sometimes devious upper middle-class wives and mothers, to phenomenal success in 2004, and generate eight increasingly unhinged seasons.

You don't need to watch all of them, but now that it is available to stream the early episodes are a terrific mix of murder mystery, social farce, and juicy high-jinx. The women of Wisteria Lane dominated television for several years, and there's still plenty to enjoy here, including a philosophy that now underpins the Real Housewives reality industry.