Eagle State
Executive producers, as of the fourth season, are Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W. Perkins, John Pardee and Joey Murphy, David Grossman, Larry Shaw and Sabrina Wind.
The setting of the show is the street of Wisteria Lane in the fictional American town of Fairview, Eagle State.
It follows the lives of a group of women, seen through the eyes of their dead neighbor, as they work through domestic struggles and family life, while facing the secrets, crimes and mysteries hidden behind the doors of their – at the surface – beautiful suburban neighborhood. The show features an ensemble cast, headed by Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo, Marcia Cross as Bree Hodge, Eva Longoria Parker as Gabrielle Solis, Nicollette Sheridan as Edie Britt and, from season 4 onwards, Dana Delany as Katherine Mayfair.
Brenda Strong narrates the show as the deceased Mary Alice Young.
Since its premiere on ABC on October 3, 2004, the show has been well received by the critics as well as the audience. The show is a multiple Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award winner, and in April 2007 it was reported to be the most popular show in its demographic worldwide, with an audience of approximately 115 to 119 million viewers.
Production
The idea for the series was thought up as Marc Cherry and his mother were watching a news report on Andrea Yates.
Prior to Desperate Housewives, Cherry was best known for producing and writing episodes of Touchstone Television’s hit comedy series The Golden Girls and its successor The Golden Palace. In addition he had created or co-created three sitcoms: The Five Mrs.
Buchanans, The Crew and Some of My Best Friends, none of which lasted longer than a year. Initially Cherry had a hard time getting any television network interested in his new series – HBO, CBS, NBC, Fox, Showtime, and Lifetime all turned his offer down. Finally, two new executives at ABC, Lloyd Braun and Susan Lyne, chose to greenlight it. Shortly thereafter, Disney had both Braun and Lyne fired, following their approval of another new drama series: Lost.
The ABC executives weren’t initially satisfied with the name of the new show, suggesting Wisteria Lane and The Secret Lives of Housewives instead, but on October 23, 2003, Desperate Housewives was announced by ABC, presented as a prime time soap opera created by Charles Pratt Jr.
of Melrose Place fame, and Marc Cherry, who declared the new show to be a mix of Knots Landing and American Beauty. While Cherry continued his work on the show, Pratt was credited as executive producer for the pilot episode only, remaining linked to the show as a consulting producer during the first two seasons.
On May 18, 2004 ABC announced their 2004–2005 lineup, with Desperate Housewives in the Sunday, 9:00-10:00 p.m., ET slot, which it still holds. After only three episodes aired, on October 20, ABC announced that Desperate Housewives, along with Lost, had been picked up for a full season.
Desperate Housewives is produced by creator Marc Cherry (Cherry Productions) and Touchstone Television (Fall 2004-Spring 2007), which is now ABC Studios (Fall 2007-present).
On February 11, 2008, ABC picked up Desperate Housewives for the 2008-09 television season. The fifth season of the series debuted on Sunday, September 28.
Production crew
Executive producers for the first two seasons were – in addition to Marc Cherry – Tom Spezialy and Michael Edelstein.
Spezialy, who also served as a staff writer for the show, left his previous position as writer and executive producer for Dead Like Me to join the Desperate Housewives crew. He had also worked as writer and co-executive producer on several shows, among them Ed, Jack and Jill, and Parker Lewis Can't Lose, while Edelstein had been the executive producer of Threat Matrix and Hope & Faith.
Second season conflicts arose among the executive producers.
As a result, Edelstein left the show mid-season, and at the end of the season, so did Spezialy. For the third year, Cherry was joined by award winning writer and producer Joe Keenan, of Frasier fame, and telefilm producer George W. Perkins, who had been on the Desperate Housewives crew since the show’s conception.
Although receiving praise for his work on the show, Keenan chose to leave Desperate Housewives after one season to pursue other projects. Replacing him as second-in-command to Cherry and executive producer for the fourth season of the show was Bob Daily, who had joined the crew as a writer and co-executive producer during the third season.
Daily’s previous work include writing for the cartoon series Rugrats as well as for Frasier. It is referred to by film crews as Colonial Street, and has been used for several motion pictures and television shows since the mid 1940s. Productions to have been filmed here includes, among others, So Goes My Love, Leave it to Beaver, The 'Burbs, Providence, Deep Impact, Bedtime for Bonzo, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Gremlins, The Munsters, Psycho, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Ladykillers and Ghost Whisperer.
For the second season of Desperate Housewives the street went through some heavy changes.
Among the most noticeable of these changes was the removal of a church facade and a mansion in order to make room for Edie’s house and a park.
Opening sequence
The initial idea for the show opening sequence was Cherry’s own, and after having asked sixteen companies to come up with suggestions how to best realize it, the producers finally hired Hollywood-based yU+co to provide the final version. According to the yU+co’s official website, the idea behind the sequence is “to evoke the show's quirky spirit and playful flaunting of women’s traditional role in society”. The images featured are taken from eight pieces of art, portraying domesticity and male-female relations through the ages.
The first image shows Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting Adam and Eve. Then follows the tomb paintings of Queen Nefertari of Egypt, the Great Royal Wife of Ramesses the Great.
An animation of Queen Nefertari is seen standing within her tomb being overwhelmed by what appear to be countless children surrounding her. Next appearing is The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck painted in 1434 – Giovanni Arnolfini is seen eating a banana and throwing the skin on the floor, leaving it for his wife to sweep it away.
The painting American Gothic by Grant Wood from 1930 then follows, and the farmer is shown smiling as he is touched on the chin by a pin up as his apparently disapproving wife frowns in front of a tin of canned sardines.
The can appears on a kitchen work surface when the World War II poster Am I Proud! is shown, depicting a woman holding cans and jars including Andy Warhol’s Campbell's Soup Cans. After the woman in this pictures is seen crying and giving her male companion a black eye, the image folds away, and the tree from Cranach’s painting reappears with the snake wrapped around it and the four main characters Bree, Lynette, Susan and Gabrielle appearing under the tree, each catching an apple.
The music for the openings is composed by Danny Elfman, and has been awarded both an Emmy Award and the BMI TV Music Award. In 2005 it was included on the album Music from and Inspired by Desperate Housewives.
When an episode is running too long, only the first sequence (the falling apple) is kept.
Several of those songs have since been used in subsequent seasons.
Housewives's unique style combined with the heavy dialogue and quick-fire writing style limit the amount of popular music used in the series. The second featuring the song "Come on Closer" by Jem showing the housewives in a department store with the tag "Everyone has a little dirty laundry."
The second season promotion took on the theme of “Temptations”, and the video featured the song "Juicy" by Better than Ezra.
The housewives were all shown in separate scenes, all of which featured red apples. M6 which broadcasts the show in France and TV Azteca which broadcasts the show in México used this promo in a different editing. Channel 4 in the UK had a very limited promotion in the 7 days leading up to the January 18, 2006 start which featured new footage.
The promotion video for the third season, which had the theme of “Right now”, featured the leading characters in a computer generated garden, surrounded by white sheets. This returned at the end of the season 4 premiere Now You Know.
The video for season four was released in late August 2007 and had the women in different 50s-era setups, all shocked at the arrival of a black car on Wisteria Lane.
The tag line was “It’s a hell of a day in the neighborhood”, and it featured the Jennifer Lopez song "Mile in these Shoes", taken from her 2007 album Brave. A cutdown version of this promo aired on RTE Two in Ireland.
The advertisements had began on March 13, 2008 and the show returned on March 26, 2008- a total of almost 11 weeks later than normal for starting. The reason as to why episode 16 is not giving a preview of episode 17 is because they are serving in the UK as a 2 part season finale on November 25, 2008 also.
The first video promo for the beginning of season five was released on Sunday, July 13, 2008, and showed scenes from the previous season..
Season 5 Promo shows the 6 lead women in red dresses, on the remake of Fever by Madonna.
We then see rolling apples and each actress takes a bite of one. the Scavo children), and some of the teen actors, Lyndsy Fonseca (Dylan) and Andrea Bowen (Julie), will also not be returning to Wisteria Lane (although their characters may).
Marc Cherry called this his cruellest act to date to both viewers and to Desperate Housewives.
That position was changed when ABC announced that part two would not be held until the writers strike ended and production resumed. Edie sees her chance to make her move on Mike, who’s suffering from amnesia, and Susan moves onto a handsome Englishman whose wife is in a coma.
Several actors who had appeared as guest stars during the entire run of the first season were promoted to regulars for the second year, including Doug Savant as Tom Scavo, Lynette’s husband who for the second season quit his job determined to become a stay-at-home dad, Brent Kinsman, Shane Kinsman and Zane Huett as Preston, Porter and Parker Scavo, Lynette’s and Tom’s rascal boys, Shawn Pyfrom as Bree’s complicated gay son Andrew Van de Kamp, and Joy Lauren as Danielle Van de Kamp, Andrew’s hardheaded sister. As had Mark Moses, as Paul was framed for murder and incarcerated, Cody Kasch, due to Zach's becoming a millionaire after causing his ill biological grandfather to die and thereby inheriting his entire fortune, and Richard Burgi, following Karl being dumped by both Susan and Edie.
Two additions were made to the main cast for season three: Kyle MacLachlan as Orson Hodge, who marries Bree and whose dark family history serves as the main mystery for most of the season, and Josh Henderson, playing Edie's bad boy nephew Austin McCann, who starts a relationship with Julie, but ends up getting Danielle pregnant and left the series mid-season.
For the fourth season, after having appeared as a guest star during season three, Rachel Fox was added to the main cast playing Kayla Huntington, Tom's daughter from a previous "one night stand". Kennedy was quickly replaced by NaShawn Kearse, but denied any improper actions from his part, even releasing a rap song, “Hold On”, telling his version of the story.
Reception and cultural influences
In the fall season 2004 Desperate Housewives premiered to massive numbers, rave reviews and an extreme amount of brand new fanatics, in its second year ratings rose more than 5 million and stayed at this ground breaking level throughout its 3rd and 4th seasons and are expected to get even higher in its new season.
Seasonal ratings in the United States
The premiere year
The show was the biggest success of the 2004–2005 television season, being well-received by both critics and viewers.
The cast ensemble was awarded with another SAG Award, as was Felicity Huffman.