Suburban Shootout

It's “Desperate Housewives meets The Soprano” said the New York Daily News. When Joyce Hazledine (Amelia Bullmore) and her cop husband move from London to the suburban town of Little Stempington, Joyce discovers the dark side of all those green lawns and dinner parties, which appears in the form of two rival gangs: Barbara Du Prez (Felicity Montagu) leads the good girls, who kill burglars and terrorize rowdy teenagers, while Camilla Diamond (Anna Chancellor) leads the bad girls, who shake down local merchants to pay for their plastic surgery. These eight episodes of the 2006 British series (be warned: an American adaptation is coming), which aired in the U.S. on the Oxygen Network, comprise the entire run of Suburban Shootout, chronicling Joyce's adventures in crime, village preservation, and botox. Unfortunately, however, the satire wears thin rather quickly, and the characters are mostly unlikable (even in a guilty-pleasure kind of way). Joyce is pretty dumb (though smarter than her cop hubby, who never catches on to her misdeeds), but the rest are simply unpleasant. And there's only so much making fun of suburbia that you can take before getting the urge to do what actual suburbia inspires people to do: leave. DVD extras include cast and crew audio commentaries and a behind-the-scenes documentary. Optional. (M. Johanson)