The series, based on the book, Footballers' Wives Tell Their Tales, by Shelley Webb, wife of British footballer Neil Webb,[3] was produced by Liz Lake, Claire Phillips, and Cameron Roach, with Brian Park as executive producer.

They include: Peter Stringfellow, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Jordan, Antony Worrall Thompson, Peter Andre, Lionel Blair, Richard Madeley, Judy Finnigan, Calum Best and Rula Lenska, as well as footballers Sol Campbell, David Seaman, Teddy Sheringham and Nigel Quashie.

From series three onward, stadium scenes were filmed at the original White Hart Lane, former (now demolished) home of Tottenham Hotspur.

The series follows a group of footballers' wives whose husbands play for Earls Park (nicknamed "Sparks").

His wife Donna is more concerned with getting their son back from the woman who adopted him after her parents forced her to give him up when she was a teenager.

At the series' end, Jason sits on the rooftop, drunk and feeling sorry for himself, but as he slips and desperately grasps for a life-saving hold on the ledge, an unseen (by the audience) assailant hits his hands with a champagne bottle, causing him to fall to his death.

Harley Lawson and Shannon Donnelly's lives are turned upside down when he becomes Earls Park's new signing.

When the swap was discovered, Conrad and Amber claimed their rightful baby back and banished Tanya abroad.

With Amber out of the way, Tanya returns and immediately aims to seduce Earls Park's latest star, Paulo Bardosa, and goes head-to-head with Eva de Wolffe (Joan Collins).

Shannon, now divorced from Harley and feeling lonely, is delighted to hook up with the new Earls Park signing, Callum Watson.

New club chairman Garry Ryan kills Roger, and Jackie leaves to live with her son Kyle in Australia.

As series five ends, Tanya is trying to come to a "settlement" with Garry over the tape-recording that proves he caused Roger's death, when he offers her cocaine laced with poison.

New characters include Tremaine Gidigbi and Liberty Baker, who marry in episode 5 in a typically over-the-top Egyptian-themed wedding.

Liberty, a top supermodel with a striking resemblance to Naomi Campbell, is exposed by the press for having a lesbian affair with her P.A.

In Bad Girls, which centres on a women's prison, Tanya is convicted for drug possession and sent to jail for six months.

After stirring up mischief in the prison and even being arrested for poisoning inmates, Tanya is eventually released when a series of events leads to the wing governor coercing a criminal to confess to planting the drugs on her.

Several characters from the original programme appeared, including Bruno and Lucy Milligan, Seb Webb, Harley and Shannon Lawson, Katie Jones, and Amber Gates.

[citation needed] In 2005, RTL in Germany adapted the programme as Das geheime Leben der Spielerfrauen (The Secret Life of Footballers' Wives).

[citation needed] Mediaset produced its own version of the series in Italy, called Ho sposato un calciatore (I Married a Footballer), which was written and directed by Stefano Sollima and lasted for four episodes on Canale 5 in 2005.

It stars Paolo Seganti and Jane Alexander as Bruno and Tonia Caracci, Karin Proia and Edoardo Leo as Anna and Vito Palma, Maria Elena Vandone as Crystal Ferrari, and Mirko Petrini as Luca Martelli.

[18] The pilot episode, written by Marco Pennette and directed by Bryan Singer, starred Lucy Lawless and Eddie Cibrian as Tanya and Jason Austin, James Van Der Beek and Kiele Sanchez as Brian and Donna Reynolds, Gabrielle Union as Chardonnay Lane, Brian J.

Creator Mary Young Leckie acknowledged Footballers' Wives as an inspiration, but chose to create a similar series about ice hockey rather than directly adapting Footballers' Wives, as she felt that some elements of the original series—particularly the broad campiness of some British humour—would not translate well to a Canadian audience.

On Saturday 15 July 2006 in the UK, the BBC made a spoof mini-episode entitled The Last Ever, Ever Footballers' Wives that was broadcast as part of Sport Relief live telethon.

The six-minute episode featured four cast members from the last season, Zöe Lucker, Sarah Barrand, Laila Rouass, Halacy Kurenski and Ben Richards, who played their respective roles, with Sport Relief host Graham Norton playing new Sparks captain Brendan Spunk.