CHESHIRE'S rich set will be portrayed in a new TV drama series compared to an upmarket version of Footballers Wives.

Gold Plated will be filmed on location in Cheshire from the end of June and screened on Channel 4 later in the year.

The eight-part series is being made by World Productions, the company behind This Life, The Cops, No Angels and Ballykissangel.

A Channel 4 spokesman described the drama as a 'family saga set in a world of the nouveaux riches in Cheshire and shows lives lived on the edge of credit and madness'.

Channel 4 head of drama and film Tessa Ross hopes Gold Plated will be a long-running returning series.

She says: 'It looks like Cheshire Footballers' Wives but with grit, with truth, with the underbelly of where they've come from, with the possibility of new money actually being about having no money.'

Details of the lead actors and other casting has yet to be finalised.

Stephanie White is marketing manager for Chester's five-star Grosvenor hotel owned by the Duke of Westminster who represents the quintessence of Cheshire's old money.

She said: 'Footballers' Wives is a stereotype. We get a lot of people here for the racing. There is a lot of old money here and a lot of new money as well.'