The most thrilling thing in TV dramas? Not the weedy women, but the kitchens to die for

Shaming though it is for a feminist to say, I often feel bored dislike for the female heroines of modern TV thrillers. I prefer the men. There, I’ve said it. Yes, they are usually villains, but they’ve got, well, more impetus.

Although I admit to bursts of addiction to these comforting TV shlock-dramas — the mixture of cosy upmarket domestic life and dastardly plots is like catnip when you’re weary — they almost invariably star women born to irritate.

My latest binge-watch is ITV’s Our House. Actress Tuppence Middleton works hard to make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear of a script, but between furious frowning and soppy delusion in the arms of a villain, she’s not given much to do.

The men in these shows may be selfish beasts, murderers or cheaters with a secret past, but they’re interesting to watch. The women on the other hand — unless they’re actual detectives or scientists with a proper job, which is fine — get all the boring lines.

They’re not nasty, rarely wicked, but drawn to be dull.

Being hurt and angry is their main function. They are always shocked by their men’s behaviour, throwing them out in self-righteous fury then often unaccountably falling into bed with someone else in the next episode. They have great hair and figures, but shatter like meringues at the slightest disruption to their perfect life.

They may get moments of being brave little mums or express soupy sisterhood with the less attractive woman next door. And if they don’t end up buried in a woodland they may get a brave speech at the end. Only rarely do these fictional women explode in interesting rage: come back, Doctor Foster.

Remember her from the 2015 BBC series — now on Netflix — in which Suranne Jones made a generation of young men terrified of brunettes? Mad as a brush, but far more fun to watch.

I have a theory as to why modern heroines are doomed to repeat this dull, dutiful story arc. I blame the houses. Mainly kitchens.

They upstage the women because, eerily, heroines with perfect hair have now become mere accessories to their perfect surroundings. Most thrillers now involve well-groomed women in vast kitchens with island units, top-of-the-range appliances and bi-fold doors opening onto gorgeous gardens. And this domestic perfection seems to be all most of them aspire to or think about.

Indeed, in Our House, the husband does mention his wife likes the house more than she likes him.

When the family finally comes to ruin, the matriarch’s main concern is not for her baffled little boys but getting hold of her next house and making it ‘just as perfect’.

When a home is gorgeously characterless and unaccountably free of children’s clutter (there are always children), you can’t believe its mistress has a credibly messy life at all. You suspect her marital troubles owe a lot to her obsession with Farrow & Ball, layered lighting and feature nooks.

In some shows, the homes have become stars in their own right. In Little Fires Everywhere, Reese Witherspoon’s domestic obsession might be a factor in her patronising attitude to the housekeeper she hires.

In HBO’s Big Little Lies we got to check out mansions in Monterey, California, each with its pristine open-plan kitchen/living area and deck. So why do the programme makers insist on portraying women as happiest in a perfect kitchen, when in the real world those days are long gone?

I fear we, the audience, have only ourselves to blame. We all enjoy a snoop round houses grander than our own. There’s a whole genre of property porn TV, from Selling Sunset to Grand Designs, based on this fact. Estate agents know a substantial number of viewers for any property are there to gawk.

We love to look for interior decorating ideas or just giggle at rich over-spenders — Gwyneth Paltrow’s Montecito house, we learned this week, is designed round her idea of ‘European majesty’. There are white stone kitchen floors because, her designer says, she doesn’t ‘do’ heavy sauces that stain.

‘Her food is so delicate it’ll be like a basil leaf landed on the marble floor.’ As your toddler’s gravy consciously uncouples from a Mr Men plate and slops on to the vinyl, you can both laugh and slightly envy. It’s unsurprising our obsession with fabulous homes has spread to TV dramas.

You get home to a bag of crisps and a properly earned drink, and are obviously unwilling to look around your own actual house because there is bound to be something that needs doing. Far better to watch Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, coming home in a fabulous coat and striding around an immaculate New York apartment. She is wondering whether Hugh Grant the lovable oncologist is a murderer, but we are gripped by the smart bedside table where his incriminating phone is about to be found.

In The Stranger, another Netflix hit, I kept freezing the screen to look at the colourful bucket chairs behind the happy, laughing family, not too bothered that they were going to be done over by fate.

And who remembers the plot of BBC drama The Nest, set in Scotland? There was something about a surrogate mother but it was upstaged by the lochside home.

Obviously there’s a technical dimension to it for TV makers. Size creates easier camera angles and enables some actors (usually the men) to express their villainy by leaning gracefully on worktops, and others (mostly women) to stride around distractedly.

Filming convenience can’t be the whole story, though. When filmmakers are armed only with dodgy plots, they often compensate by having the camera swoop from one vast room to another. A prime example of this horror-drama property porn came last year in Netflix’s Safe. Just as I was thinking, ‘Oh, that’s good, there’s an alcove for the big freezer’, I noticed they were putting a corpse in it.

In the works now is ITV’s The Suspect — so far we know Dr Joe O’Loughlin has ‘the perfect life, devoted wife . . .’ so we know there will be a shallow grave and a dark mystery. I bet Dr Joe has a more interesting time than the wife.

Maybe, in this age of crazy house prices and rents, there’s a moral. It tells there is more to happiness than a perfect property, and that those privileged beasts with their dream homes aren’t happy.

Makes you content to live in friendly chaos with mismatched curtains and children’s junk, watching from a nest of dog hairs on your old sofa.