TAKE four women and put them into one big house split into four apartments.
  
“It was like being The Beatles in Help! We’d all run up and down the stairs, party in each other’s houses and borrow sugar and tea,” recalls Sarah Parish.
  
The cast of Mistresses (BBC1, Tuesday, 9pm) spent three months living together while filming the second series of the drama.
  
“Someone made the fatal mistake of letting us share a house,” adds Orla Brady, who plays Siobhan, alongside Sarah as Katie, Shelley Conn as Jessica and Sharon Small as Trudi.
  
“Our producers found a really nice house in Bristol with a great pub just around the corner that served food. I say ‘mistake’, but in fact it was great for us as we could drop in and have cups of tea and chats and glasses of wine.
  
“It did result in a lot of tiredness, though – you know how you can’t go to bed when you are sitting up having a glass of wine and chatting? That happened a bit too much and then we had to get up at 5am looking a bit worse for wear.”
  
New lovers, new lies, old secrets is the theme of this series which proved a hit with both women and men last year.
  
“There were all these comparisons with to Sex And The City which we were desperately trying to fight off,” explains Sarah. “But, at the end of the day, Mistresses is about four women and Sex And The City is about four women, so we are all labelled as one and the same, but the shows have very different feels to them.
  
“I get a lot of comments from men. My local butcher loved the show and was asking me about the storylines. I expected Mistresses to be something that attracted women, but men seem to love it too.”
  
Twelve months on from when we last met them, GP Katie’s suspension is over and she’s about to start a new hospital job, where her married boss just happens to be her first ever boyfriend from medical school. And then there’s the handsome heart surgeon who takes a shine to her.
  
“I think people get hooked because Mistresses is so episodic and there are so many things going on,” adds Sarah. “Your interest is always kept up on a high because there are four stories happening at once.”
  
Lawyer Siobhan was the one who cheated last year on caring husband Hari (Raza Jaffrey) before the couple resolved their differences and he agreed to stand by both her and a baby that wasn’t his.
  
Sadly for Hari, Siobhan still has urges which don’t involve him and is driven to extreme behaviour, while nursing a dark secret.
  
“Filming love scenes always seems preposterous,” says Orla. “Usually by the time you get there you feel so nervous, uncomfortable, fat etc that there is only one way to cope with it, and that is by finding it quite funny.
  
“In this instance I worked with the same crew on series one, so that made it better as we all know each other. Also I trusted my director and knew that my ass wasn’t going to end up on screen in his shots, so all in all it was fine.” 
  
Asked about the appeal of the series, she replies: “The only thing I am aware of is that my story seems to have happened to a lot of women as people have told me as much.
  
“I think maybe it is relieving for women to see other women make really bad decisions at every turn. Ah yes, we watch telly to know we are not alone.”
  
The new series opens with the girls getting ready for a hen party, which turns out to be for party planner Jessica after a whirwind romance with wealthy businessman Mark. But this marriage is to be of the open kind.
  
Episode one also features the wedding. Shelley recalls: “When I arrived on set I felt as if they were real guests waiting for me to walk down the aisle. It was strange because I’d barely met Oliver Milburn, who plays Mark, before, so I married him on our first day of working together.
  
“I had watched the film 27 Dresses before I filmed the scenes and in it they talk about the fact that, at a wedding, everyone turns to look at the bride when she enters, but only she sees the groom’s reaction.
  
“I was really thinking about that as I came on set. When Oliver and I looked at each other it felt like a secret between the two of us. I imagine that’s what a wedding day is all about.”

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