‘It’s not that show at all,” says Catherine Bell, dismissing early criticism that her new Lifetime series, “Army Wives,” is simply “Desperate Housewives” set on an Army base. “It’s really just about people, dealing with things that real people deal with, as well as with the added drama of what the Army would deal with.”
The hourlong drama, premiering Sunday, focuses on the lives of four women and one man, all of whom with one thing in common: they have a significant other who could be killed at any moment. They are Claudia Joy (Kim Delaney, “NYPD Blue”), the alpha wife of the group, married to a colonel (Brian McNamara, “The O.C.”); Denise (Bell, “JAG”), stay-at-home mom and wife of a major; Pamela (Brigid Brannagh, “Over There”), a former police officer whose status as a surrogate parent, if found out, could get her ostracized from the group; Roxy (Sally Pressman, “Shark”), a feisty woman from the wrong side of the tracks who marries a soldier (Drew Fuller, “Charmed”) after knowing him only a few days; and Roland (Sterling K. Brown, “Starved”), who is coping with his lieutenant colonel wife’s (Wendy Davis, “Commander in Chief”) post-traumatic stress disorder.
With all that affects military families today, this seems the perfect opportunity to explore some of these issues, which the show delves into in the pilot episode. There’s a lot going on, which is understandable, as the episode is trying to introduce all of its many characters. Both Bell and Delaney believe the pace will slow as viewers get more comfortable following all the story lines.
“Like life, every day is going to be different,” Delaney says. “What I love about the show is it’s current; it can go anywhere.”
But how current it will be regarding real-life military events may be a wait-and-see proposition.
“The producers don’t want to make the show political at all,” Bell says. “It’s just more about the people that are in the military and the things they have to deal with. Whether or not they show a clip of Bush making a speech … we did that often on ‘JAG,’ where we’d pull stuff from the headlines. I think that would be tricky (in this series).”
Bell also has recollections of her time wearing a military uniform on “JAG” that helped somewhat in this new series, in which she is in civilian duds.
“I think I got such an understanding, just being around it for nine years (on ‘JAG’). (‘Army Wives’) doesn’t deal with the protocol so much. … (On ‘JAG’) I learned all about proper salutes and protocol parts of it. I was able to help Wendy … kind of give her some pointers on that.”
“My daughter goes to school with an Army reservist who teaches about the military,” she says. “I was asking his wife some questions.”
Delaney has some close ties to the military that helped her get a feel for what these families go through.
“My dad was in the Army,” she says. “I have a really good friend (who was in the military).”
Also, for authenticity’s sake, the pilot episode was filmed on a decommissioned Army base … er, make that “post.”
“It’s a post,” Bell says, laughing. “It sounds funny; I’m so used to calling it a base. I’ll probably still call it a base for a while.”
