Secret Diary of a Call Girl

Initial Impression: Should have been an hour premier.

The Bottom Line: Hold your criticisms until episode four.

Thoughts:

If you combine a little Sex in the City with a lot of Hotel Babylon and add a generous portion of Billie Piper you get the Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Any proper review has to wait until around the fourth instalment. The characters are not developed and Belle/Hannah (Piper) as of episode one is nothing more than the write up over at ITV’s profile page:

Be fabulous but forgetable. That's Belle's motto when she's out working. She is confident, beautifully dressed and genuinely loves her job. Her parents think she works late as a legal secretary. In reality she leads a double life.

And her double life, or rather the separation of the lives, is the theme du jour. I suspect the dynamic of the show will be the close calls and near collisions of people from Belle and Hannah’s respective spheres.

For example, when meeting her Madame/Agent (played by Cherie Lunghi and lifting a page from Jacqueline Bisset’s portrayal in Nip/Tuck of the equally bitchy and interesting James LeBeau) Belle expresses her mortification should her parents find out what she does for a living and asks if she can further pixelate her web profile photo.

We know that she is going to get recognized somewhere despite her best efforts to be “fabulous but forgetable.” We also know that she is bound to get into a relationship which will cause some tension as she struggles to keep her two lives separate.

A show about the oldest profession is bound to have some expectations. I suspect there will be plenty of twists on old conventions which is why I will continue to watch.

And Billie looks delectable and might just fill out the role in more than the obvious ways. I have a feeling she will impress.

I’ll hold off on doing a comparison between Hotel Babylon and Secret Diary until the latter can stretch its legs a bit – but two shows adapted from two tell all books? C’mon. I won’t be the only one who does so.