That's become the water-cooler question of the week ever since the never-a-dull-moment dark comedy premiered this month on ABC.

Pulled in by its provocative title, sexy stars and storylines brimming with suburban secrets and scheming, 20 million viewers a week have made it the most-watched new series (9 p.m. Sunday, Channels 9, 22).

The plot: Four attractive stay-at-home mothers and wives who live on Wisteria Lane in Anysuburb, U.S.A., are dealing with their own personal dramas while trying to figure out why their friend Mary Alice put a gun to her head.

It sounds dark, but it's also shockingly funny - and surprisingly true to life. And it's resonating with women all over.

"It's funny, kind of racy and a little mysterious - kind of like Knots Landing meets Twin Peaks," says Christie Schmidt, a 36-year-old mother of three from Mason.

"I am a stay-at-home mom - though not desperate - and I love the fact that there is a show about women like me that doesn't portray us as little mealy-mouthed June Cleaver wannabes. The women in the show are smart, sexy, funny - I love it."

Deby Weik, a 49-year-old mother of four from Independence who works full time, says she was hooked immediately.

"I laugh. I'm intrigued. I gotta see what's going to happen next," she says. "It just gets you on so many levels."

Suddenly, housewives are hot, and not just on Wisteria Lane.

Many fans of the show also say they love Wife Swap, an ABC reality show that sends the female head of one household to live with another, wildly different one. Fox also has a version, called Trading Spouses.

Then there's the best seller Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik.

It's about a book club that gave itself that tongue-in-cheek moniker after the husband of one of its members concluded that's what they did all day.

Robert Thompson, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, says what we're seeing on TV reflects what's happening in real life: many women are deciding to leave their jobs, at least temporarily, to start families.

Of course, TV has always mirrored real life - or established the ideal. In television's early years, housewives in Leave it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show happily cleaned house and served meals with nary a complaint.

In the 1970s, shows such as One Day at a Time showed women at work in an attempt to reflect the changing American family. In 1980s, families in The Cosby Show, Family Ties and Growing Pains included working mothers whom viewers rarely saw working.

Desperate Housewives embodies the post-feminist view of the stay-at-home mother, Thompson says - one who's intelligent and powerful but who has chosen, for one reason or another, to stay home.

Like Lynette, Felicity Huffman's character, Gelene Morales of Independence worked in advertising before becoming a stay-at-home mother. She's hooked on Desperate Housewives, too.

"I just love the fact that it actually goes into the intricacies of what stay-at-home moms go through," says Morales, who is 32 and has a 2-year-old daughter.

The show is not without its critics, including those who say it perpetuates stereotypes.

The workaholic husband of the unappreciated Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) lavishes expensive gifts on her while she carries on an affair with her young gardener. Bree (Marcia Cross) is Martha Stewart minus the suspicious stock sale. Huffman's Lynette is the harried, Malcolm in the Middle-esque mother.

But at the same time, the show is conscious of its stereotypes - it critiques them at the same time it exploits them, Thompson says.

And just as narrator Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong) hammers home in just about every Desperate Housewives episode, things are not always what they seem on the outside - on TV or in real life.

"What they call a housewife may be someone who's creating the next vaccine on her back burner as she makes macaroni and cheese," says Bon Bons author Landvik.

"I know that's kind of an extreme example, but everybody's always deeper than their definition."

E-mail lbishop@enquirer.com