Most critics have been comparing BBC America’s new series Mistresses to Desperate Housewives, with the latter coming off unfavorably. And yes, Mistresses does sometimes feel like a less candy-colored look at the world of women than Desperate Housewives portrays, but comparisons to Sex and the City might be more apt.

Revolving around four British friends who drink wine while talking about sex and relationships, Mistresses feels like a real world version of Sex and the City. That series took time to give their characters depth and let them grow into flawed humans, but the BBC has nothing to prove. These characters are immediately flawed, without apologies. In the very first episode, Siobhan (Orla Brady) cheats on her baby crazy husband with a co-worker, and Katie (Sarah Parish) finds her entire career jeopardized after the patient she had a two year affair with dies. Character exposition is trusted to the editing (which never lags) and a quartet of highly skilled actresses, who manage to convey their characters with a minimum of affect.

Which is not to say that Mistresses isn’t a tiny bit clichéd. Jessica (Shelley Conn) is clearly the group’s Samantha, prone to espousing her views on adultery (she loves married men because they keep things simple) and taking Siobhan lingerie shopping hopping into bed with a co-worker. And while Trudi (Sharon Small) has been made a 9/11 widow, she’s still the same harried mother trying to navigate the dating scene that we’ve scene a hundred times before.

But then, we’ve seen Trudi and the rest on American TV, which is why Mistresses stands out. Not as squeamish about sex or cursing, the show is peppered with offhanded remarks about ass waxing and plenty of bleeped out words. There’s also a casualness to the proceedings that’s a marked improvement over American dramas. We don’t feel someone the envelope being pushed as on Desperate Housewives, or the heavy-handed trend-setting of Sex and the City. Instead, we have four realistic women whose lives are both entertainingly high-drama and comfortingly complicated.

9pm Fridays on BBC-America.

Photo courtesy of BBC America.