Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4085 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-01-07
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 177 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Billie Piper managed to avoid the dangers of typecasting, when she leapt to Secret Diary Of A Call Girl soon after departing full time work on Doctor Who. And while the series itself may lack a little polish and charm, there’s little doubting the ferocity of Piper in the central role.

Secret Diary Of A Call Girl is, of course, based on the huge best-selling book of the same name, and it follows a woman with a dual life. Her profession? A London prostitute. To anyone who asks? She’s a secretary. And while much of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl is given over to Piper’s explicit professional duties, there’s also the core of a drama as she struggles to deal with the conflicting sides of her life.

Yet this is never, ahem, fleshed out particularly well, with the programme makers too often distracted themselves by the titillation over the substance. And the problem is that once the sexually-charged scenes are over, there’s not always enough in the tank for an episode to justify its running time.

Piper, to her credit, puts in sterling work here, and the Secret Diary Of A Call Girl will do her continually rising star no harm at all. It’s also an easy, unambitious drama that does manage to entertain. As a result, this complete set of all the episodes from the first series still has merit, and is still worth checking out, it’s just there was an opportunity here to do something a little bit more. --Jon Foster

DVD Description
Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper (Doctor Who), is the sexually explicit story of a beautiful woman who leads the ultimate double life. To her parents Hannah is a legal secretary, which often involves late night work. To her clients, Belle is whatever they want her to be. However, her moto of never getting emotionally involved with her clients is soon put to the test. Follow Hannah/Belle's adventures and mishaps in this eight-part mini series.

Synopsis
ITV2's sexually-charged drama, SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL, follows the double life of a beautiful young prostitute working the streets of London. By day, Hannah (Billie Piper, DR WHO) is a respectable legal secretary who works long hours to make ends meet. By night she's Belle, a ruthless, money-hungry hooker who will do anything to satisfy her clients' basest fantasies. A professional in every sense of the word, Belle slips with seeming ease from the role of girl-next-door to high-heeled dominatrix, taking care never to become emotionally involved with her clients. But the constant pressures of keeping her two lives separate begins to take its toll, and in an unguarded moment with a handsome stranger, Belle lets slip her true identity. From then on, he only wants to be with Hannah...
Based on the internet blogs of London call girl Belle de Jour, this provocative first series presents a very human angle on the sex trade.

Customer Reviews

Billie grows up
I've always liked Billie Piper. She does that star quality that many so called celebrities seem to lack these days.
I think she has come a long way since Doctor Who, and this series is proof of that. She breezes through the raciest of subjects, and the end result is a believable performance which does carry the show in some of it sinking ship moments. It's a good series, though in some area it only scratches the surface of where it can actually go. It's fine to leave room for interpretation, but here there are a few too many holes.
However, Billie's performance makes up for that and made it a very enjoyable show to watch. I will definitely be buying the DVD, and will now be interested in Billie's other acting work.

Fantasy, and nothing more
Phew, a lot of people seem to have got their knickers in a twist over this one... and in so doing, they're playing right into ITV's eager hands. (Innuendo entirely intentional.) How dare they! Suggesting that prostitution is a glamourous, enjoyable and entirely safe profession! How can they promote such a vile notion? How dare Billie Piper, with her adoring youthful audience, take on so irresponsible a role? How dare they suggest that this is how things are in the real world?

Answer: 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' is NOT representative of the real world, in any way, shape or form. It's about as indicative of the realities of the sex trade as the 'Bad Boys' movies are of police work. And we, as grown human beings - and yes, grown ups are the target audience here (over 18's at least) - should have the common sense to be able to recognise this. Alright, so it's based on what are supposedly the real-life memoirs of a professional high-class call girl; I haven't read the blog/book, though from what I understand it their veracity has been brought into question. To put it bluntly, that's neither here nor there. This isn't a documentary. This is a bit of saucy, late night escapism, the kind of which we don't often see from a major British television broadcaster. And, as such, I'm happy to admit that I rather enjoyed it.

It's clear from the get-go that 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' is designed as lightweight, easy entertainment. For starters, the episodes are only about 25 minutes long. Obviously that doesn't allow a lot of time for intricate plot and character work. What it does allow is for the show to get straight to the meat of the matter, figuratively and literally. It's a show about sex, and it doesn't shy away from that. Within the opening minutes of the first episode, we have our nymphette protagonist stripped down to her Victoria's Secrets, speaking with her mouth full - and that's just the beginning! Let's not be coy about this, for, after all, the show's marketing certainly wasn't: the main draw here is the promise of the hitherto sweet and innocent leading lady getting nude and naughty, Billie following gamely (again, pun intended) in the footsteps of innumerable former child stars such as Drew Barrymore and Alyssa Milano, taking a sexually explicit role in order to show us she's all grown up now. And that shouldn't be taken as a negative, for she certainly does a good job, handling the very provocative dialogue and content with confidence. And as for the nudity... one of the smartest moves on the part of the programme makers is the way the show teases the viewer with Billie's body, practically making a burlesque routine out of it: starting out with only a few tantalising glimpses of nakedness, keeping the audience tuning back in hungry for more as just that little bit more of the young star's anatomy is exposed episode by episode, until finally all is revealed mid-series, in a two-girl one-guy threesome scene...

Now some of you are calling me a perv. Fine. I'm not even going to deny it. Once again, that's what this show is really all about: unabashed titilation. To expect a hard-hitting insight into the realities of prostitution is to completely miss the point. 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' isn't aiming to be Ken Loach; it's aiming to be for the new generation what 'Emmanuelle,' 'Nine and a Half Weeks' and 'Red Shoe Diaries' were for generations past. And I think it's pretty successful in that. So sue me.

Great bit of telly!
Can't believe the other reviews, having never read the book I do not have anything to compare it to. I loved the series and thought Piper's performance showed off her ability to do more than the safe roles she previously had. I really liked the different clients each week providing new directions for the story to explore whilst keeping the ongoing story of Belle. For entertainment value I thought it was great piece of TV and I look forward to the second series. This show should be appreciated in its own right.