Skåne wives

Hollywood wives, Orange County, New York and now Skåne. What's next? Hässleholm or Milwaukee, Anchorage... 

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  First there was "Hollywood wives" now there's "Skåne wives"? Not quite. The only thing the two Swedish reality TV shows have in common is the fact that they focus on a small group of good-looking married ladies. But the wives in Skåne are actually successful businesswomen, rather than pretty packages only. From left to right in front of the Öresund Bridge: Angela Kingberg, Vera Stevens, Nancy Fadel, Maria Popko, and Christina Nilsson.

• Forget about the housewives in Orange County and in New York – the really fascinating housewives live in… well, Skåne, Sweden's southernmost province. It’s the latest production in Swedish reality TV, and if you are to believe the wives themselves, it’s just like “Sex in the City”, but without the City. The show centers around a group of successful women in their 40’s who, according to publicity, “like to taste the fruit that life has to offer”. “We are women in the prime of our lives who stay together and support each other,” says Nancy Fadel, one of the five wives portrayed.

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  Light and fluffy but seemingly what the public is asking for today; reality shows but how real are they now..? (Skånefruar, the kickoff screen.)

• The title “Skånefruar” (“Skåne wives”) is a bit misleading as it makes one think of “Hollywoodfruar” (Hollywood wives, the show that catapulted Anna Anka, former wife of Paul, into the limelight) and it’s not in their roles as wives, but rather as flourishing entrepreneurs that these Skåne women were chosen for the show. Fadel, for instance, is a Swedish agent working for a couple of foreign interior design agencies. At first she said no to participating in the show. “But they didn’t give up, and eventually I changed my mind about it.” Fadel thinks “Skånefruar” will prove to be a good and inspiring series. “If not it doesn’t really matter,” she says. “Life goes on anyway.”

• Watch the first episode (which ran Sept. 8) here: http://www.kanal5play.se/program/play/skanefruar-s01e01 (In Swedish)

• Does the audience ever tire of this? Because, make no mistake about it, an audience there is... also in Sweden. By the way there's now Danish and Norwegian Hollywood wives, and reality shows on every imaginable, glamorous or provocative strata of society. They run on a variety of channels; the original Swedish Hollywoodfruar still has episodes on TV3, www.tv3.se