This January, both RT�? and Channel 4 have bought Ugly Betty for broadcast. The two channels clearly have a very different perspective on what Ugly Bettymeans to their audience. RT�? Two is showing it on Monday nights at 7pm, while Channel 4 has devoted a primetime slot - Friday at 9.30pm - to Betty's charms.

What makes it a hit? It's an abundance of cliches - the underdog (Betty as a fashion disaster in a high-fashion magazine Mode); the unlikely love story (Betty and Daniel Meade, the editor of the magazine to whom Betty is an assistant); the race card (Betty's family are Hispanic and poor - a social demographic that rarely features on a major network beyond gang members in CSI); and the villain (Vanessa Williams plays a two-dimensional disgruntled wannabe editor determined to thwart Daniel and Betty's work. ) For younger viewers, there's a mishmash of Aesop's fashion fables. For the older viewer, it's a post-ironic guilty pleasure to tide us over until The OC creator Josh Schwartz's new programme Gossip Girl hits our screens.

Despite the occasional oddity of mimicking the telenovellas from which the programme came and which the Suarez family watch in their spare time, Ugly Betty is visually pleasant.

And this Happy Meal of glossy morals has turned out to be quite a money-printing franchise.

Originally the Colombian telenovella Yo Soy Betty, La Fea ('I Am Betty, The Ugly') in 1999, the programme went on to become Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin ('There's No One Like Jassi') in India in 2003 and two years later Verliebt in Berlin ('Smitten in Berlin'). In each programme, Betty wasn't hired for her competence (although she is hard-working and professional), she was hired because the editor's father (and boss) figured she was too ugly for him to be distracted from his work.

Of course the TV joke behind all of this is that Ugly Betty is not actually ugly. With the exception of Irish and English soaps, you can't put ugly people on television. So behind the pantomine braces, thick-rimmed glasses and dodgy fringe is the very pretty actress America Ferrera. Ferrera shouldn't be worried about being typecast. She has already won the 2005 Movieline Breakthrough Award and a Best Actress Award from the Sundance Jury for her part in Patricia Cardoso's Real Women Have Curves.

So Ugly Betty tries to teach us that if you're not a hottie, you have to work harder. And if you're pretty, you're already in a position of power, but aren't capable of completing simple tasks. Is this really a positive message as the PR surrounding the series blubs? Should we really be accepting that things are so hard for the underdog in the first place?