Secret Diary of a Call Girl Season 4   Starring: Billie Piper Warner Home Video RRP: £24.99 1000181210 Certificate: 18 Available 04 April 2011

Belle is an attractive and successful high class prostitute who enjoys her work, but finds it difficult to juggle her professional and private life. Returning home from a trip abroad Belle find her Madam in jail, Ben her prospective partner hanging around and Belle herself having to play house mother to her Madams daughter...

Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007-2011) is a successful show which has courted controversy because of its highly sexualised content, as well as its general portrayal of prostitution as an amoral act. The show was created by Lucy Prebble.

If you haven’t seen the show, Billie Piper plays Belle, the central character of the autobiography Belle de Jour written by a real call girl. The tone of the show tends towards the light hearted and conspiratorial, as the central character continuously breaks the fourth wall by talking to the audience. This works well and reduces the possibility of the show being accused of encouraging voyeurism.

With the show coming to its natural end the fourth season had a lot of loose ends to tie up, not least the relationship between Ben and Belle. However as the show opens Belle finds that she has to put up her Madam's daughter whilst she is having a quick stay at Her Majesties pleasure. Of course there is the obligatory sex scene whose eroticism is defused by the use of humour.

The main story threads for Belle has her looking after the Madam's daughter as well as trying to run the other girls whilst at the same time her book is becoming successful, successful for Hollywood to start to notice. Her relationship with Ben remains rocky, even to the point of finding him in bed with another woman. Eventually, the show grinds its way to the series climax, with the "will they or won’t they" get married.

Billie Piper is beautiful, vivacious and sensual as well as very funny, the perfect Belle, though because the show concentrates so much on her exploits some of the supporting characters are little more than two dimensional in their presentation. The writing is slick, with good production values.

The two disc set holds all eight episodes of season four. There are no extras on the discs, apparently extras cost more, but there are subtitles.

It’s well worth catching up with the series if you haven’t already, it’s a real little home grown gem.

8

Charles Packer