The Women Who Really Run the House

Forget good help. You can’t find help, period.

All those real housewives, all those semi-real Kardashians, so many make-believe mistresses, district attorneys, multitasking soccer moms and divorced dads, and it’s almost impossible to tell who picks up after them.

Domestic workers are all but invisible on television. It’s gotten to the point that the only time viewers see a broom is during an Olympic curling match.

“Devious Maids,” a series starting Sunday on Lifetime, is therefore a landmark of sorts, a show focused not on the ladies who lunch, but on the ones who prepare it, then wash the dishes, mop the floors and iron the tablecloth. The series, created by Marc Cherry, who was also responsible for “Desperate Housewives,” is a recession-era corollary to the privilege and pizazz of that show’s Wisteria Lane. (Eva Longoria, who played Gabrielle on “Desperate Housewives,” is an executive producer. )

There are rich, bored housewives on “Devious Maids,” but those catty, self-centered Beverly Hills employers are mere foils for the real heroines, who are poor, Hispanic and striving: desperate housekeepers.

And that perspective is the main selling point of a show that has amusing touches, but is relentlessly arch and tongue in cheek in a way that seemed fresh when “Desperate Housewives” began in 2004, but now is less so. That tone has been used to good effect so often on shows like “Ugly Betty,” “Drop Dead Diva” and “Suburgatory” that it has grown a little stale, even on Lifetime.