Footballers' Wives (ITV)

THE nation mourns. Lower the flags to half-mast. Tonight is the final episode of Footballers' Wives. Who can possibly contemplate Last Night's TV when the end of the Earls Park soccer saga is nigh?

How we'll miss the gravity-defying cleavage and reality-defying plots, the naked bums and the nails. Above everything else, we'll remember the well-manicured, highly-polished nails that could poke out a man's eye at 50 paces.

I have seen the future - a preview tape - and can reveal that the final episode is marred only by a foolish attempt to inject real acting and drama into this boobs-and-bums saga. Stick to being tatty and trashy, is what I say.

The series is nothing more than Dynasty with footballs. The makers' idea of soccer coverage is a camera shot travelling along a row of soapy male bottoms having a post-match shower.

Footballers' Wives has been trash TV of the highest order, from that over-the-top-and-far-away Snow White wedding of Chardonnay and Kyle to the absolutely ludicrous bit about the nurse using the limp limbs of a comatose patient for her own gratification. And let's not forget - we couldn't if we wanted to - that infamous sex on the snooker table scene featuring an ex-EastEnder actress.

Much of the time, it has resembled one of those 1960s soft porn British romps (I, of course, have never seen one but I know a man who has) with naff dialogue to match. "I only got my job back because Frank wants to get in your knickers" is the sort of line that won't give Sir Alan Ayckbourn any sleepless nights at the prospect of the writer ousting him from his lofty position.

The cliffhangers in the final episode demand a second series. We think it's all over, but hope it's not. The good news is that Bad Girls - from the same company and a triumph of trash TV - is back on Thursday.