“That fight to change the world had become an uphill battle”

In the United States the largely inconsequential television channel ABC has begun airing Mistresses, a faithful remake of a British show of the same name. Nothing more than a melodramatic recreation of Sex and the City with soap opera histrionics neither show deserves anything other than the most customary appraisal. Reviewing the latest interpretation with half an eye on their fond memories of the original, The Guardian Newspaper responded accurately, dismissing it as, 'Clichéd tosh.' Why? 'Everyone is hateful, self-obsessed and has stupid hair.' The reviewer, Julia Raeside, is possibly correct on at least several of those points, but why has Mistresses US failed to capture the magic of Mistresses UK? After all, the programmes are ostensibly identical. When the critics came to the lauded British version Kathryn Flett of the Guardian Newspaper called the characters, 'two-dimensional,' and John Crace of the Guardian Newspaper called the plotlines, 'absurd.' How has the move to somewhere sunny blown this direct translation so laughably off course? Summing up the original, Crace wrote, 'The whole point of Mistresses lay in its glossy, drossy pointlessness,' but he meant this as a compliment.

Mistresses US is shallow, dumbed-down, gaudy and decadent. Such adjectives could have worked in the show's favour had the makers been wise enough to aim low. The series concerns mistresses of varied kinds, yet as far as female representations go women do not emerge positively. The main characters are poorly-drawn and hugely unlikeable despite some commendable career success, positions of social authority and expensive outfits. Their chief interest, with the business world conquered, is men, despite the occasional distractions of lesbianism and murder. What follows on from the predictable set-up is a disappointing mass of nothingness that fails to establish theme or even a consistent tone. The aspirational wealth is repugnant and more than a little obscene given the emotional ugliness of the heroines. Only the token black female is not directly responsible for her downfall, but this appears to have had more to do with political correctness than narrative counter-balance. In a bid to write strong women the leads have been loaded with flaws, culminating in lying, cheating, infidelity and assisting suicide. This does not make them sympathetic, but well-written characters needn't be. They must at the very least be engaging and worth following. Yet once the writers failed to achieve this they turned to desperate twists and lazy outside antagonism as alternative means to maintain ratings.

Showrunner Rina Mimoun has welcomed the guilty pleasure tag, but explained, ‘Hopefully we're a grounded, relatable drama that has a lot of fun to it.’ Hoping did not make it so, as Mistresses never comes close to representing true life or recognisable situations, offering only kitsch value to add to its vapidity and softcore nudity. A sudden lurch into earnestness did for the BBC original as it reached its latter seasons because guilty pleasures lose their pleasurability when the illicit thrill of being caught watching them is lost to an attempted upturn in quality. Still, was Mistresses UK a true guilty pleasure, as many critics contended? How could it be when the makers showed self-awareness of their gratuity and silliness? Mistresses US, on the other hand, is so misguided it could be described as a guilty pleasure due to the fact that if you enjoy it you are guilty of something. The term itself is something of a misnomer as audiences are supposed to delight in what they watch on television. While Mistresses UK had the intelligence to dose their ridiculousness with a knowing sense of irony their counterparts across the pond have produced a risible imitation that cannot be enjoyed for the purposes intended.

This somehow leads us onto the always appropriate topic of Mills & Boon. There is no more lucrative a genre in publishing than romance, with sales weighing it at a mighty $1.4 billion annually. While the most popular by an impressive distance romance remains the least critically and culturally respected of genres. The animosity runs so deep that scholars have accused such novels of turning its easily manipulated fans into passive consumers. Therefore the success of romance is not a reason to celebrate, but rather to speculate on the emotional and intellectual deficiencies of its readers. While vicious and potentially upsetting for anyone easily manipulated, this critique is as myopic and superficial as much of the work it attacks. In her book, A Natural History of the Romance Novel, Bewildered Heart favourite Pamela Regis argues that this viewpoint refuses to offer a true definition of the romance novel and fails to discuss the nature and scope of the genre. While Regis sets out to prove the personal, historical and societal value of romance fiction there is an alternative opinion of less significance that no one seems foolish enough to touch upon, and that is the guilty pleasure, depending on what people mean when they talk about them.

The MIRA imprint might suggest that Harlequin has moved part of its business model upmarket, but the majority of the company's output is decidedly unambitious. Mills & Boon and their stable of authors have always struggled to wear the guilty pleasure badge with the strange sense of honour that might accompany it. For their fans, being spotted with a romance novel brings tinges of embarrassment and not necessarily as a result of the poor prose and amateurish characterisation. The mortification stems from the personal assumptions others make towards Mills & Boon readers. Yet what does this, in turn, say about the publisher? Are they cynical exploiters of the vulnerable, are they no more intelligent than their customers, or are they merely sating the public's desire, which appears to be growing in the wake of Twilight and Fifty Shades? What is so wrong with being a guilty pleasure? Why can't the producers of such things embrace their position? After all, EL James seems more embarrassed by her sales than by her novels. The romance genre offers its astounding worldwide success as proof of its method. Their identity as the manufacturers of harmful, lowest common denominator drivel may never be challenged by the company itself, but do they ever want to be taken seriously as something more than just a thriving business?

If an audience wrongly believes that watching shows about the sex lives of fictional women is something they should feel embarrassed about then the intentional trashiness of Mistresses masks these feelings by focusing on the indulgence of Schadenfreude and brainless entertainment. If Mistresses was thoughtful, profound and tasteful then critics would have a greater issue to scruntinize, assuming such a series would find a channel, let alone an audience. The same question cannot be asked of reading literature, perhaps the most noble of all hobbies besides drawing Hugh Jackman. Still, devouring romance fiction is seen as a shameful past-time unsuitable for public conversation, even though everyone seems to be doing it. Yet is this a form of suppression against women, or is this a similar situation that met the Sex and the City movies, the mere demand for better material? Would thoughtful, profound, tasteful romance sell as strongly? Is the inherent cheesiness of Mills & Boon part of its appeal? Do readers enjoy them with a sense of knowing irony, revelling in the tawdry drama, tacky euphemisms and pig-headed characters? The pages and pages of writing guides such as Secrets Uncovered suggests Harlequin is intent on moving away from the inadvertent joys of their novels, but in doing they risk alienating readers and Bewildered Hearts the world over.

“Sophie nearly snorted her coffee”

MIRA, Harlequin's respectable cousin of an imprint, has found cross-over success by side-stepping the conventional trappings of the Mills & Boon formula. Hip, young writers including Victoria Fox and Caren Lissner have found their novels published under geography-based titles such as Wind Chime Point and Temptation Island, thus falling on the less embarrassing end of the embarrassing romance title spectrum. Of equal importance their covers do not necessarily feature models in softcore clinches to an exotic backdrop of a photo studio. As if to further the distance between potential correlations MIRA has its own website full of the pretense that while other romantic options are available they can be found somewhere else, and that somewhere else isn't nearly as debonair and fashionable as the home of The Case of the Diffident Dom and So Tough to Tame. Over at Harlequin's virtual abode an aspiring author will be hard-pressed to find any helpful guidelines for joining the MIRA stable of novelists. The most similar-sounding alternative Bewildered Heart has managed to unearth in the matter of seconds it took to complete a thorough search was SuperRomance, which bears an uncanny resemblance to MIRA by also being a meaningless, invented word.

Increasingly there seems little discernible difference between each of Mills & Boon's series of subgenres, especially now the online market has blossomed and a growing audience wishes to be seen as unique. Nocturne Cravings, Loved-Inspired Suspense and African-American may possibly be self-explanatory, but what of SuperRomance? 'Our stories are big romance novels filled with intense relationships, real life drama and the kinds of unexpected events that change women's lives forever!' Don't be fooled by a handful of those statements which are clearly untrue and several of the others which are consistent with every book the company releases. The key word used was big. Indeed, SuperRomance is defined by its length, averaging an eye-watering 85,000 words. Most romances struggle to justify between fifty and sixty thousand words, dragging out a misunderstanding across four chapters to meet a contractual obligation, so how are SuperAuthors supposed to bulk out their flimsy plots to such an extent? Are there certain key elements that might help extend that flagging second act for an additional one hundred pages?

'A strong central romance that's big in scope and believable in execution. There can be a secondary romance and subplots.' Secrets Uncovered revealed that supporting characters and less important tribulations served as a distraction from the main business of getting it on, but when an extra thirty thousand words have been demanded this kind of thinking is more of a hindrance. The opportunity to explore theme through juxtaposition and female subjugation through a part-time job allows for a richer, more credible landscape, offering deeper internal conflicts and greater emotional resonance to the core relationship. With time SuperCharacters and SuperLocations can be introduced carefully with skilful nuance, and it is for this reason, probably more than all the others, that SuperRomance is all the more critically disappointing. 'High emotional stakes. The characters' goals mean something to them, might force them to make difficult choices and might be in conflict with the romance.' While these aren't necessarily sentences in the traditional sense they are perhaps worthy of examination. If Romance is itself an imprint, and oddly enough it doesn't appear to be, then SuperRomance ups the ante, heightening the drama and introducing truly difficult dilemmas that require sacrifice and compromise. This would suggest that Harlequin has finally published proper novels with satisfying stories, even though the evidence points to the same tired, trite tales with a bunch of tacked on scenes involving a younger sister falling for a rebel.

Next, 'The hero and heroine should work for their happily ever after so give them obstacles and complications that need to be resolved.' This is certainly perceptive, because without events and things to talk about the courtship will last half a page and the author will need to find eighty-four thousand and seven hundred synonyms for happy before their book is finished. Once they have found means to temporarily keep their superhero and superheroine apart how will the impediments be fixed? 'Resolve issues by moving them to the next logical step, but don't wrap everything up in a neat bow!' Surely a SuperRomance isn't super without SuperHeteronormativism and what's more super than tidiness and gift-wrapping? Apparently no one knows, because the guidelines move on without further explanation. With an acknowledged desire for realistic settings, real life dramas, complexity, character depth and believable reactions to larger than life incidents, Harlequin has taken a deliberate step away from the fairytale fantasies of their other series. With this in mind, the idealised endings of old have no place in novels where people struggle for love and question what they want from life.

From there we learn that, 'Tone can vary from the light-hearted to the deeply emotional, from family sagas to light suspense.' This has all the fogginess Mills & Boon is famed for, as if with a hundred different styles of story no one considered separating them on the grounds of mood or genre. At least any tension beyond fleeting appears to have been ruled out, as action adventures with a hint of romance are published by just about everyone else. Nevertheless, there is plenty between family saga and light suspense on the scale of excitement, even though it seems tricky to figure out exactly what the scale would look like. Finally there's the vital inclusion of the wider worldview and, 'a sense of community. Paint a larger picture of the characters' lives by showing their relationships with family and friends, social lives and work.' The previously considered worthless qualities of description and entertainment have a home at SuperRomance. Whereas in the cut-throat corporate office of Modern, the hospital corridors of Medical™ and the idyllic small-towns of Special Moments here an author can explore details outside the staring and emotional-stupidity that amounts to loving in the Harlequin canon.

Crucially, therefore, authors are left with one question to ponder over their post-lunch cocktails. Why write for any series other than SuperRomance, besides the obvious reason of laziness? The task of dreaming up thirty-thousand more words will put off many, but the narrative benefits surely outweigh the negatives of further typing. These imprints appear to offer all the usual expectations of a Harlequin romance only with increased appeal, writing quality and likeability. There seems no reason as to why this is impossible with a less taxing word count, but perhaps the publisher has learned that what works for its rivals might also work for them. MIRA does away with the standard tricks of classic Mills & Boon, and instead positions itself as a publisher of run-of-the-mill chick-lit and bonkbusters. However, this only leads Harlequin away from the corner of the romance industry it invented and continues to monopolise. While the company broadens its appeal and audience there remains the threat of identity loss. This can only be good when the product Mills & Boon floods into the world on a monthly basis is so tired and underwhelming, but their move into longer, contemporary fare inspired by the most popular romance fiction of their competitors can hardly be seen as progress, but rather another sideways step in a history of sideways steps.