STRUGGLING to manage a heavy workload? Not a problem, simply offer to show someone in the office your knickers and they'll do it all for you.

Well, that's what Siobhan did in the first episode of new drama Mistresses (BBC One, 9pm, Tuesday) and it worked a blooming treat.

Mind you, it's not what you'd call a long-term solution, because she still wound up having to work late and ended up sharing more than just a flash of her frillies with said colleague, even though she'd been desperately trying to conceive with her devoted husband.

So we all know what's going to happen now.

Siobhan will be pregnant at long last - but, she won't be sure who the dad is.

Welcome to the world of Mistresses, where we follow the love lives of four thirty-something girlfriends who met at university, but whose lives have taken very different paths since.

Well, not all that different to be honest.

They all seem to live just round the corner from one another and are always meeting up like one big happy (ish) family, except with more mascara, shinier hair and better cars than your average clan.

Current Queen of TV Drama Sarah Parish (she inherited the title from Sarah Lancashire, who is now too old to play totty and has moved on to the Corsets, Carriages & Crinolines department) plays Katie, the lead pal and rock of the group.

She's a GP, but this is Mistresses don't forget, so she's been secretly having it off with one of her patients; though just so it doesn't all get a bit too Carry on Doctor, her lover has now died and it's revealed that she'd been supplying him with morphine to ease his final days.

Even her friends had no idea this had been going on but now his son is on to her (in more ways than one, judging by the trailer for next week).

Trudi (Sharon Small) is a busy, harassed, single mum.

We know this because she is the only one with slightly messy hair.

In real life she'd actually be the one with Petit Filous smeared on her jeans, nails like a navvy and a nightlight that plays Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star where her brain ought to be. But, this is Mistresses, and so we learn that Trudi's husband died (or did he?) in the Twin Towers attack six years prior and she's just received a compensation cheque for $2 million.

Which we're all meant to think is the reason that handsome new single dad at school is suddenly trying to get off with her, but that would be too obvious (hopefully).

Lawyer Siobhan, who we touched on earlier, so to speak, is the one having an affair with a colleague because she had a lot of work she needed help with, nudge, nudge.

And Jessica (Shelly Conn) is the fancy-free bed-hopper who is having an affair with her boss but is about to cop off with one of their clients - who, this is Mistresses remember, just happens to be a beautiful lesbian.

So, that's all the boxes ticked.

It's good fun, in a toned-down This Life meets Sex in the City sort of way, with lots of references to sex and the women coming out with rude words for their unmentionables and talking about "doing it" in front of blokes.

Trouble is, the actresses look embarrassed saying the rude bits and at times I felt embarrassed watching them squirm.

The channel describes it as a story about secrets and anger, passion and lust, loss and guilt. I'd describe it as a lesson on how to get stockings and suspenders, lesbians and limos into a storyline and still get away with calling it drama.

PS. Could anyone in their right mind ever eat a chicken again unless it has lived in a palace with big fluffy roosting perches, rolling terraces, Enya's complete CD collection and a floodlit mini football pitch after watching Hugh's Chicken Run (C4, 9pm, Tuesday)? PPS. Do you even want to eat anything ever again after watching Half Ton Mom (C4, 8pm, Sunday)?