MUMBAI: The much-awaited launch of the popular ABC show Desperate Housewives on China's CCTV8 failed to impress the tube thermometer. Thanks to the broadcaster's insistence that the dubbed version should be devoid of sex and violence.

CCTV's Entertainment Program Center deputy director Qin Mingxin is quoted in media reports as saying that the show had been scrubbed of some of its excesses during translation.

According to reports, the first episode that aired Monday night was about three minutes shorter than the original, with some lingering shots of a crime scene snipped out and a love scene played out on a dining room table altogether cut. However, a section of the public still felt that the western show had too much sex in it.

Desperate Housewives is titled Crazy Housewives in Mandarin.