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SWEPT UP: Roselyn Sanchez, Edy Ganem, Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez and Judy Reyes star in ‘Devious Maids.’
Susan Lucci for “Devious Maids”
Here’s the dirty little secret behind Lifetime’s “Devious Maids”:
The dramedy comes off a lot like a remix of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”
That’s hardly an accident.
“Desperate” creator Marc Cherry adapted this Mexican telenovela for a U.S. audience, and he and “Desperate” star Eva Longoria serve as executive producers.
Like“Desperate,”“Devious” focuses on several close-knit women in a gorgeous community. The hook here is that they are all Latina domestics working for overbearing clods in Beverly Hills.
Just as “Desperate” did in its first season, “Devious” opens with a violent death and the mystery surrounding it — maid Flora (Paula Garces) is brutally attacked and killed by an unknown assailant.
A waiter found holding a bloody knife is quickly arrested, but he almost certainly is innocent.
Into this twisted neighborhood comes new maid Marisol (Ana Ortiz, “Ugly Betty”), who is most definitely more than she seems. She befriends the other workers, including Zoila (Judy Reyes, “Scrubs”), who waits on an unstable aging actress (Susan Lucci, “All My Children”); Rosie (Dania Ramirez, “X-Men: The Last Stand”), who serves a selfish starlet (Mariana Klaveno, “True Blood”) and her nice, older husband (Grant Show, “Melrose Place”); and Carmen (Roselyn Sanchez), an aspiring singer hoping to launch her career with the help of her employer, megastar Alejandro Rubio (Matt Cedeno).
The dialogue is as arch as “Desperate” in its heyday, and twisted Evelyn (Rebecca Wisocky) and Adrian Powell (Tom Irwin) are doppelgangers for Bree (Marcia Cross) and Rex Van de Camp (Steven Culp).
“Sorry about the blood and gore,” Evelyn tells her new hire Marisol about the crime scene. “I was going to clean it up myself, but I wasn’t emotionally capable.”
With her outrageous accent, Alejandro’s personal assistant Odessa (Melinda Page Hamilton) could pass as a villain out of “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
“Devious Maids” can be a chore to sit through because of the constant verbal abuse and humiliations these women endure on their jobs. You naturally want them all to move on to better positions — but, of course, that would mean the end of the show.
For those viewers who toil in dead-end jobs, “Devious Maids” will cut like a real-life horror show.
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