BBC TV's scorching series by Fay Weldon is well and truly revamped by Hollywood into a scatty romantic comedy which serves as a vehicle for Roseanne Barr to expand her popular TV image and Meryl Streep to let her hair down. Ed Begley Jr is nicely cast, being equally believable as a desirable man and a figure of fun, as the husband plump Barr loses to romantic novelist Streep. Deserted, the frumpy housewife turns she-devil to exact a tortured (and tortuous) revenge. All this is jolly and modest fun, with biting too deep or actually making you laugh. Streep and Barr have fun and so, to a degree, do we, even if the enterprise lacks a certain vital spark. As a wet weather time passer, it does the job. Lovers of the TV serial, though, may be advised to stay away.

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