After eight seasons and 180 episodes of dirty laundry, Desperate Housewives comes to a dramatic end in America this weekend and in the UK on E4 next month.

To celebrate, here are 10 pieces of trivia about the show…

> Buy the complete Seasons 1-8 boxset on Amazon.

 

» Doctor Who star Alex Kingston (River Song) auditioned for the role of Lynette, but was turned down for being “too curvy”.

 

» Marcia Cross was pregnant for the majority of Season 3. If you watch the series, you’ll notice that in most of the scenes, Bree’s midriff is subtly covered by baskets, boxes or even other characters!

 

» Nicollette Sheridan, who we all now know as Edie, originally went for the part of Bree: “At the end of the reading, the director looked at me and said, ‘No, no, I see you as Edie.’ I said, ‘Oh, I see, I come in a housewife and mother of two and leave the slut.’” Meanwhile, Marcia Cross (Bree) had auditioned for the part of Mary Alice Young.

 

» The role of Susan was originally written for Mary-Louise Parker, who we now know as the lead in the comedy Weeds. Calista Flockhart, Heather Locklear and Courteney Cox were also were considered.

 

» There was a controversy surrounding a line from the Season 4 premiere, in which Susan asks Katherine’s gynaecologist husband if she can check his diplomas aren’t “from some med school in the Philippines”. Viewers protested against the ABC network until the line was removed from all subsequent broadcasts.

 

» The pilot aside, each episode in Season 1 is named after a song by stage and film composer and songwriter Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the songs to the musicals Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. All subsequent episodes are still named after songs.

 

» The suicide of Beth Young in Season 7 mirrors the suicide of Mary Alice Young in every camera angle, from the shot of the gun, then the trigger to the reflection of the body falling to the floor in a reflective surface.

 

» The Desperate Housewives set was previously used in Kelly Rowland and Nelly’s video for Dilemma!

 

» Season 1’s finale is the most viewed Desperate Housewives episode of all time, totalling over 30 million viewers on its first broadcast.

 

» In a scene where Susan falls into a wedding cake, Teri Hatcher broke two ribs, but insisted they proceed with filming. What a trooper!

 

Are you going to miss Desperate Housewives? Let us know below…