HOW do "they" research what "we", the frustrated TV viewing housewives, find sexy? Do they talk to any real women? Because we keep seeing the same old cliches with such alarming regularity that perhaps nobody has told these guys we don't want our $400 dry-clean-only blouses ripped from our heaving breasts while getting banged senseless on a table full of fruit at an angle that could only result in limping painfully for weeks and visits to the chiropractor. We've seen so many young rippling brown male torsos since Tom Williams's that they've lost meaning. That Kirby boy on Lipstick Jungle stripped off to reveal a glossy abdominal tray of what appeared to be hot cross buns. They were his abs and we're supposed to want 'em, bad.

Do we? All of these Cashmere-Lipstick people and their steamy sex lives seem contrived to a degree that makes Mills and Boon read like literature. Were Sex And The City and This Life the only shows that ever got the sex right? (I still think Rich Man, Poor Man had the most memorable make-out scenes but I was nine and easily impressed.)

But what would do it now, if not a blond boy of roughly school age writhing on a table full of fruit? Do they ever show fantasy boy, ever so seductively returning the ice-cube container to the freezer - with water in it? No. Do these oiled-up hotties ever take out the garbage, as if it was their idea, as if they want to? Never.

Do they ever take the panting woman's car for a service and leave their car for the day? They just don't think these things through. Instead, the women with whom we are supposed to identify (although they don't own one dog-food-stained pair of tracksuit pants) have wild violent sex that was not their idea and lose an expensive outfit a week.

The doctors of Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice suffer from the same fantasyland syndrome. I've got nothing against a hot doctor but when every MD in the practice looks as if she/he should wear a sash and campaign for world peace, we have a problem. We know this practice is not a possibility because anybody who looked that good at university was doing shots and having hot-cross-bun-tummy sex, not studying. Doctors this hot are actually working for Medicine Sans Frontiers, nude, and we're fantasising about them and their good works.

Private Practice also suffers from Joanie Loves Chachi syndrome, where the spin-off reveals the terrible truth that the hot minor character in the hit show is a two-dimensional bore incapable of carrying the whole load. That Kate Walsh, who played Addison, McDreamy's sexy vixen ex-wife with heart of gold and remarkable Ob/Gyn skills, turns out to be just another pretty skinny girl when she leaves Seattle and the unbelievable hot fantasy doctors of that hospital.

But of all its fatal diseases, the McLeod's Daughters Fever should finish off this new show. With McLDF, the viewer suffers from an inability to distinguish one male character from another because the casting directors stuck so closely to the brief they hired identical quintuplets to play every role. It's a tragedy and quite excruciating to watch. Run, Addison, run back to Seattle Grace while there's still time. It's too late to save the quintuplets. They'll get a commercial or a reality show.

Let's return to the dizzying world of Lipstick Jungle and leave the sex where it belongs, on the dining table with some strawberries. Do "they" think we all fantasise about being magazine editors, movie execs and fashion designers? It's such a bitch-slap to all the interesting successful girls who own acrylic nail salons and laundromats. Who are they having steamy sex with? We, the tracksuit-wearing underclass, want to know because we've seen that same blond rippled boy handed from PR girl to luxury hotel proprietor and back to love-starved magazine editor. He's exhausted and we're bored.

There is almost nothing to say about the involvement of Brooke Shields or Andrew McCarthy, other than the shameless targeting of the sad and delusional audience. (How can it be that Rob Lowe was our age in the '80s and now he's 29?) The whole time Andrew McCarthy is trying to convince us he's a multibillionaire we can see his mind ticking over: "Why didn't I get James Spader's role in Boston Legal?"

Because, Andrew, you're puffy and you made Weekend At Bernie's.

Lipstick Jungle Seven, Sunday, 9.30pm
Private Practice Seven, Sunday, 8.30pm