I've just watched the first episode of the new Denise Richards reality show. So I'm a bit behind the ball, I know, I know, but there's no way I'm missing brand new Outrageous Fortune on a Tuesday night for this muck. I figured it would be replayed a million and one times on the E! Channel anyway, and my hunch was proved right.

I won't be watching it again. Like touching the iron, wrapping a large snake around your neck, and getting an STD (did as a kid, once for a photo op and have never had one, respectively), there are some things you only have to do once before you realise you really, really don't want to do them again.

Denise's show has been pimped relentlessly on the E! Channel along with promos for that Lohan debacle, a show which is yet to assault my eyes. For this, you can thank Ryan Seacrest, responsible for the majority of entertainment-based reality muck across our screens. Don't get me wrong, I love some of it (hello, Kardashians!) but this programme is all sorts of wrong. It's not even a guilty pleasure - it just makes you feel guilty.

Ryan Seacrest was the diminutive brains behind getting Denise Richards on the box, and I can imagine him weasling up to her during negotiations, telling her how ‘misunderstood' she is and how people want to hear ‘her side' of the story.

Even the title of her show, Denise Richards: It's Complicated, promises much more than it delivers. It's not that complicated. Denise Richards, Bond girl and not-very-much-in-demand actress, has been involved in one of Hollywood's dirtiest divorces for the last couple of years. On top of that, she's been branded a husband stealer for dating the ex of her one-time best friend, Heather Locklear, almost immediately after their split.

Something Denise does little to refute in a magazine interview during the series' opening episode. Quizzed over dating the husband of her so-called friend, Denise claims that she and Heather weren't friends, and after an awkward silence poses the question "how does someone steal someone's husband anyway?"

I think that answer speaks for itself.

Not that I can understand why two gorgeous women would be scrapping over Richie Sambora, the puffy faced eighties throwback with polyester-looking hair. That kind that really cheap wigs are made of. Wiggy hair. You know when you're wearing one of those puppies that if a whiff of a flame goes near your head, that mess is going up. Spare a thought. Richie Sambora has to live with that burden every day. Hair aside, the music he makes alone would be enough to send me scurrying for the hills should he come a-calling.

Her motivation for this series is confusing. She said it was for her kids. Said it was to make a living. Said it was her dying mother's wish. She says a lot of things.

Denise shares her California home with her dad, Irv, who seems far too normal to have been thrust in to his daughter's crazy world. He despairs of her foul mouth (she's caught on camera in a journalist's office dropping the c-bomb on the woman) and convinces her to give up a pair of her designer shoes for every cuss word she utters. By the end of the episode Denise has to part with ten pairs of gorgeous shoes - but judging by the closet piled floor to ceiling with shoe boxes, she won't exactly miss them.

You also catch a brief glimpse of Denise's daughters, Sam and Lola - the subject of a legal shitfight before the series went to air. Their father, Charlie Sheen, didn't want his toddler daughters exposed to the spotlight at such an early age. Denise was keen to pimp them out, and a judge sided with her.

They may take on a bigger on-camera role in the future, but from their fleeting appearance in the opening episode I got the feeling that Denise wanted them involved so badly just because Charlie didn't.

Of course, Denise loves to play the ‘single mother with two kids' card, a line she parrots repeatedly throughout the show. You'd think there'd never been a single mother before from all the hoo-ha she's making about it. Heads up, Denise. You're not the first, and you certainly won't be the last. And most of them aren't getting the US$60k a month in maintenance that you're getting from your ex-husband.

Not that Denise has the hard decision to be made between work and family. Aside from this reality show, girlfriend hasn't exactly been swamped with offers of work in the last few years. She's had a role on her ex's show Two and a Half Men, a couple of TV pilots, and a movie made with Pamela Anderson, Blonde and Blonder, famous for Denise getting into an argument with a photographer at a Vancouver casino and throwing his laptop off a balcony, hitting an elderly woman below.

But then, I guess bitching about Charlie Sheen is a full time job.

"I tried to take the high road," she insists to a reporter who comes to her home to profile her for a popular American magazine. I guess the high road is what she calls leaking the ex's emails and voice messages, getting employees to spy on him, accusing him of being a pervert addicted to internet porn, and asking for sperm so she could have a third child.

The reporter doesn't help matters, telling Denise that "what you're doing for women is really important." Can we back it up here for a minute? She's not campaigning for breast cancer or helping the homeless. She's fighting down and dirty for as much of someone else's money as she can get. Important for women, my arse.

Mind you, it's well known Charlie Sheen is no angel, but this is divorce people. D-I-V-O-R-C-E. And Charlie is one of the best paid actors on American TV for his role in Two and a Half Men, a comedy which I don't ever think I've laughed in once. Charlie's loaded, and with no other wealthy husband on the horizon, Denise wants a slice of that pie.

Charlie should be used to the crazy. Paula Abdul was his sister in law for several years, after all. Denise is beautiful, but I really do think she's a bit unhinged. And with all the mudslinging and legal wrangling and squabbling they've been flinging at each other, maybe they really are a perfect match.

The Denise and Charlie Show - now there's a reality show I would watch.