12/9/2023 0 Comments Secret diary of a call girl imdbPiper herself suffers in my eyes for being used and being handed weak material but she does do well with it. Instead it feels padded and slow, like each weekly "sketch" of an episode is struggling to fill it. This should fly by and be rammed with material in an attempt to fit it all into the constraint of the short episode run time. And things are done in a few scenes as the short season run is added to by the short episode time barely 20 minutes long. Likewise any physical, psychological or otherwise downside to the profession is presented in the same glossy episodic way that seems to suggest that there are no problems or concerns that are lasting or that cannot be resolved in a few scenes. There is potential in some of the emotional turmoil that Hannah goes through and also her relationship with Ben, but the writers don't make much of it other than being very obvious and dull. These are not helped by how very episodic and contained the show had been for the first four episodes and the fact that it had not really engaged up till then either. That leaves the attempts at substance which season 1 brings in later on. Shows can engage by being light and fun but in this case it doesn't. Instead of being fresh, fun and engaging by being superficial, it uses this tone to deliver loads of teasing stuff that is so soft-core that you wonder who they were appealing to other than the tabloid writers with column inches to fill. That the show is light weight and superficial is not a problem the problem is that it is not very good at doing it. Based on the book by the real Belle, who is to say what is real and what is not but certainly the whole programme has a "Sex & the City" gloss on it that makes it feel like a fantasy aimed at viewers of that very programme. What we get though is a series that doesn't do any one thing well enough to make it work. These issues are nothing to do with the quality of the actual product though and, outside of the tabloid's getting sexy photos of Piper and putting their own spin on it (approve or disapprove they all ran the photos!), the show needs to work on its own terms. The main reason for it doing quite well though is of course the novelty value of seeing former Doctor Who assistant Billie Piper taking a massive jump away from her light-entertainment clean-cut personae. This made products that they may never have considered buying turn into "the next big thing" that they were pushing and it is hard to believe that this show didn't get picked up as a result of that. The less obvious factor is the writer's strike in the US, which left gaps in the network's schedules that needed filling. This series benefited from several things and I think it would be disingenuous to pretend that they were not factors in its relative success. As she discusses various aspects of her life and job with us, we also follow her as tries to get her work/life balance right. She was not abused, not forced into it and not addicted to any drugs she enjoys sex and she likes money and her chosen job is a good way to get both. The truth is that Belle is a high price escort who services clients via her madam. To her best friend Ben, she is busy young woman who loves fun and has fairly frequent stories of her sexual encounters. To her family Belle is a legal secretary in London with a busy lifestyle of a single woman in the city.
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