Your next box set: Ugly Betty

Ugly Betty began life as Colombian soap opera Yo Soy Betty, La Fea. Then, thanks to a canny investment by Salma Hayek's production company, it was transformed into a US hit comedy about an ugly duckling set adrift among spiteful swans.

Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) is a homely Latina girl from Brooklyn whose heart is set on journalism. When she inadvertently gets a job at top fashion rag Mode in Manhattan, she is propelled down a rabbit-hole peopled with shallow, snide fashion-bots who openly sneer at her terrible clothes.

Betty is a goody-goody with lovely skin. But, so you know she's a repulsive outcast by Hollywood's standards, she wears heavy-rimmed glasses and those braces that look like you're chewing tinsel. If she had an actual moustache and boils you wouldn't warm to her at all – because you too are shallow, see?

The wicked witch is Mode's editor-in-chief Wilhelmina Slater, played with camp malevolence by Vanessa Williams. She's a surgically-honed hate machine who spends much of her time engineering evil. Betty must show her co-workers the value of integrity and goodness, so that they too may find depth in their superficial lives.

It sounds saccharine but there's enough citrussy wit, courtesy of the bitchy fash-pack, to make this a pacey romp. The fourth and final season, out now on DVD, sees our four-eyed heroine stymied in the love stakes but promoted at work. Not that any of her romances ever progress beyond handholding. They've never dared show her kissing with all that metalwork in her gob. However, she gets less ugly with every series, until the culmination of this last one, in which the gum jewellery and heavy specs are gone.

After the final show, the title appears in red, then the word "ugly" dissolves away. Despite its "don't judge the aesthetically disadvantaged" message, Ugly Betty is as profound as a paddling pool – and all the better for it. If camp escapism is your thing, dive in.