The Hunting Wives review: This high-camp new drama is like Dallas with added boobs

Or if Joan Collins and the rest of the Dynasty cast could have wandered around Denver effing and jeffing like troopers?

Well here's The Hunting Wives (ITV, Saturday, 9.30pm) to give you an idea, all gold lame, margarita pitchers and drawling Southern belles, with a hefty dose of high camp.

Sophie (Brittany Snow) has just moved to the flatlands of east Texas with her husband Graham, an architect working on a new HQ for the business of reptilian millionaire Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney).

There are multiple clues here about Sophie and Graham are working through their unspecified trauma in their recent past, which makes former PR woman Sophie an intriguing target for Jed's wife Margo (Malin Akerman).

Margo's the kind of woman for whom clothing is optional, swearing is both big AND clever, and secrets are as natural as breathing.

“We're not secret keepers,” Sophie tells her at one point.

“Well, what kind of marriage is that?” scoffs Margo.

Sophie – a woman who has lost all her confidence, something the weak-chinned and profoundly unpleasant Graham is all-too-willing to encourage – is easy meat to Margo and her friends, the hunting wives of the title.

All all big hair and big teeth, these are women who don't have to do anything thanks to wealthy husbands – even the pastor's wife seems to have a luxurious lifestyle – and as a result struggle to find ways to fill their time.

“We don't work, we wife,” one tells Sophie. “I'm just a regular gal. I love to shop, and hunt and drink.”

And that's exactly what they do, loosing off literally gold-plated shotguns at every opportunity, and heading down to the local bar to line-dance with – and possibly pick up – a Stetson-hatted, denim-clad ranch hand.

It's all cartoonishly big – the houses, the hair, even the teeth – with scarcely a minute going by without a randy wife leading on the high school basketball star, or a threesome in a jacuzzi.

It's as if the creators had watched Kevin Costner's Yellowstone and dialled everything up to a Rob Reiner-esque 11, never letting the pace flag and throwing out plot points all over the place.

We start, for example, with that evergreen favourite 'the scene where a woman pursued through the woods', before flashing back to Sophie and the events that lead up to the chase.

Then there's hints about dark secrets in Sophie's past, Margo and a potential vengeful fellow wife, mysterious glassy-eyed men watching suspiciously in bars and a wrong side of the tracks romance.

The performances are similarly OTT, with Malin Akerman as Margo in particular chewing through a lot of scenery, her character the spider in the centre of a web, drawing the unsuspecting in before killing them with a strong margarita and a well-aimed put-down.

That's not to say The Hunting Wives isn't good fun – it is. Despite being awful, Margo also carries unexpected hints of vulnerability, and you can imagine Sophie regaining that lost confidence and telling Graham where to shove his architect's plans.

It makes no demands on you, just lets your mind gentle boggle at the enormous houses, the drawls and the y'alls, while making points about the insincerity and hypocrisy of right-wing politicians “riling up the base”,

It's just the thing to ease yourself out of the Quality Street-induced coma and into the new year, with just enough bling, boobs and bluster to keep you awake.