Sun Jun 15, 2008 — by Mike Gold

Who's A Hooker

Review: Secret Diary of a Call Girl

Actress Billie Piper does not appear naked in Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Well, a bit here and there, actually. Oh, and if you’re a Doctor Who fan, he’s not in this series.

You may have noticed Showtime is debuting a series tomorrow called Secret Diary of a Call Girl. However, it’s possible that you’ve been staring at the promos so closely, you might have missed the forest for the trees, so to speak. Yes, that is Doctor Who companion Rose Tyler as the author of said secret diary. But now she calls herself Belle. Somewhere else in the time/space continuum, she remains British pop singer-turned-actress Billie Piper.

Due to the kindness of not-so-strangers, I have seen the first seven episodes of this program as originally aired in England. For one thing, Showtime is selling it with lots of shots of Piper shopping. If you think this show is another Sex And The City, you’re wrong. It’ll appeal to straight men. But the fashions are nice.

The show will arouse most guys' prurient interest. I was going to say “because there’s nudity and sex garments and stuff,” but SATC had that, too. All I can say is, the show will arouse most guys' prurient interest.

I’ll bet you I just increased Showtime’s ratings.

If, like many of us here at ComicMix, you’re a Doctor Who fan you might find the sexual content of this show disconcerting. If so, please, by all means, get a life. One that actually involves another person.

If, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, you’re a hooker fan who understands spending obscene amounts of money indulging in your distraction, this is the show for you. Eliot may already have this series on his iPhone.

But – you may ask (but if you’re a guy you probably won’t) – is Secret Diary of a Call Girl any good? I mean, from an aesthetic standpoint. 

Billie's good. She's quite an actress, well beyond the standard pop singer origin discount. She made me care about her character. The writing's quite good; it's not two-dimensional, nor is it exploitative, and it's clever-funny. The original stories upon which this is based were a hit on the Blogosphere and were denoted by some women as feminist-approved.  

There are lots of nice little touches as the show endeavors to be set in the "real" world and not the exploitative leering world of commercial television (the production is from Britain's ITV, not the BBC). Sort of like Marvel Comics of the 1960s: okay, you can crawl up walls and swing from Queens buildings to Manhattan buildings, but you can still worry your relatives and have real life get in your way.

The series indulges in that "tear-down-the-fourth-wall" stuff that was used so effectively in Hustle. It's cute, it's a tease, and that's the central storytelling device. If the show were longer than 22 minutes, it might be annoying.

Overall, Billie's fans won't be disappointed. The Doctor's fans might, but hell, it's called Secret Diary of a Call Girl. What do you expect?

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