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.

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