Desperate days about to hit China

It's official: the women of Wisteria Lane are coming to China -- and with them the explicit exploits, controversial storylines and salacious gossip that has made Desperate Housewives such a runaway success worldwide. The show will premiere in September on CCTV-8, in the nightly segment "Everyday Jiayi" with two episodes screening per day.

As Shanghaiist pondered previously, what persuaded state-sponsored CCTV (who decreed that Friends was too sexually explicit) to allow the screening of a show that, according to the American Family Association, promotes "prostitution, adult-teen sexual relations, infidelity, deception, seduction, adultery, promiscuity [and] sadomasochism"? And that's just in the first episode. Perhaps they were convinced by the didactic of Housewives creator Marc Cherry that the series bears a moral code (as well as having a distinct "gay vibe"). Buena Vista Senior Vice President Steve Macallister said (rather optimistically) "a good story can transcend all cultures and languages." Whether it can transcend Chinese censorship authorities is a less fluffy matter -- Shanghaiist thinks it likely that significant portions of the dialogue will be either deleted or dubbed over with tamer connotations.

At any rate, China can now look forward to the acerbic suburbian satire that has enthralled and infuriated viewers worldwide -- that is if they haven't already purchased the readily-available pirated DVDs at a street corner near you.

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Desperately seeking CCTV