lowculture.co.uk

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Pay the Piper

HOOKER! The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, ITV2, 10.00pm

If you'd come up to us a year ago and said that at this point in time we'd be eagerly anticipating the start of a new drama on ITV2, we'd have laughed so hard a little bit of intestine may have come out of our mouths. It's funny how things change, isn't it? Thanks to a killer concept and some canny casting, here we are, eagerly awaiting the debut airing of Billie Piper's adventures as a prostitute, based on the notorious blog of apparent real-life call girl going by the name of Belle de Jour.

Obviously with a premise like that, media attention for the production has hardly been what you'd call lacking, and you can't turn sideways any more without seeing another interview with La Piper talking about how it gave her a taste for fancy lingerie, or how hard she had to think about taking the role. And fair play to her, it probably is the sort of role that would give you pause for thought (we'd be more concerned about appearing on ITV2 than playing a dominatrix, but that's just us). It does, however, leave us wondering what we can say about it that hasn't been committed to print a million times already.

There's a good chance the whole thing will make the world of prostitution seem surprisingly glamorous (as opposed to how it appears on, say, EastEnders, where it means you're addicted to crack and will probably have to sleep with Ian Beale or similar) and we're not even going to touch the whole responsibility/ethics aspect of that with a ten-foot pole, since our knowledge of prostitution is roughly the same as our knowledge of astral physics (despite what may have been written about us on certain corners of the internet). But given that it's based on a true story we've got to admit we're really very curious, however sanitised and late-night-TV-friendly this version may be. Plus, there's Dame Billie, as mentioned before, and also: Cherie Lunghi. It's not really like we even have the option of not watching, is it?