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I was introduced to The Secret Diary of a Call Girl the other day by the Pixie.  (I suppose I should put a spoiler warning on this for people thinking of watching the show in the future.)

I suspected immediately that it was based on a book or blog series and it turns out that it is, indeed, just that - based on the book based the blog of Belle de Jour (and since it seems all sex bloggers know each other, I will assume most of my few readers already know who that is).

It has much the confessional style of a blogger, with series lead Billie Piper often addressing the camera directly to comment.

I caught the fourth episode (the link to the show site offers to let you play episodes but I can’t seem to link to it) where Belle becomes a pro-domme (well, learns and tries it out). I suppose  I should ask Calico her opinion of it.

I don’t really have context, so I don’t know if the subplot with her best friend is some kind of important romantic or personal arc that is the "real story" of the series or not. In the episode, Belle ends up getting pissed at her best friend and takes it out on her sub. He safewords out, which she ignores at first.

I was only partly paying attention, so I am not sure, but it sounds like he apologizes for it - they both do - but he says something like she ‘really got it’ at the end there. I want to double check that last part, but I can’t get the clip to play on the laptop.

Belle then comes out to her friend and there is some voice over about her learning sometimes you have to abandon control. So it seemed to use the pro-domme thing more as metaphor for the character development. I don’t know if the show always does that with her sex work or not, though.

Mind you, the pro-domme who she trained under was presented not as a crazy out of control person at all. She’s matter of fact, professional, out to her husband, and very reasonable and polite. She is played a bit for laughs in how she teaches Belle, but the humour was more based in her matter-of-factness.

In fact, it is the "out to the husband" bit that rattles Belle, who is closeted to her best friend, which is why they are having stress.

I can’t quite make up my mind about the show and don’t really know if it was good enough for me to bother watching the rest. However, given the diversity of how BDSM is actually lived  it is always interesting to see how it is presented in media. i’m not sure if this was a positive or a negative over all.