Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Billie Piper

Belle is a happy hooker — smart, confident of her skills and unapologetic about her profession. It's Hannah, the Englishwoman behind the faux French name, who has some issues in Showtime's new comedy, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (tonight, 10:30 ET/PT).

Diary is inspired by the story of the real Belle, a pseudonymous London call girl whose diaries became a sensation in England. The TV series sets its Belle (Dr. Who's Billie Piper) on her own course as a newer version just getting used to the double life: high-end escort to affluent clients, "nighttime legal secretary" to family and friends.

Piper's Belle, who frequently talks directly to the camera, is frank with the viewer: "The first thing you should know about me is I'm a whore." She is assigned clients by a madam (Cherie Lunghi).

"She's at this phase where she's quite comfortable with who she is and what she's doing," the actress says.

In picking up the eight-episode Diary series, which was a hit in England, Showtime veered from internal development, which has yielded such critically praised series as Weeds, Dexter and Brotherhood.

"We've been developing some things in this arena but never quite got it right," says Showtime entertainment president Robert Greenblatt. Calling Piper "captivating," he says: "You care about (Belle) and about her straddling two worlds. It's funny and sexy and just seemed like it would really work over here." Diary fits Showtime's style of comedy, a provocative topic with dramatic and emotional elements "so it isn't just a frothy thing."

He says it fits well with its lead-in, Weeds, and its pot-selling suburban mom. "They're very different shows, but both have a strong, maverick woman in the center. They're both doing illicit things. They're both in the world of hedonism."

Early in the first episode, Belle explains, a bit defiantly, that she likes her job and is neither an abuse victim nor addicted to anything, "except maybe for the fourth season of The West Wing." Critics have complained that Secret Diary glamorizes prostitution, but Greenblatt says no political statements are intended.

Piper, 25, says Diary simply plays off the world of the real Belle, whom she met briefly. "I was more familiar with the darker, more tragic side to prostitution," she says. But Belle "is very graceful, very composed, very articulate. You realize there are very different extremes to prostitution."

But the work exacts emotional costs in Secret Diary, whose first-season episodes all were written by women. Belle is alone as she hides her employment from her parents and her best friend, Ben (Iddo Goldberg). The secretary ruse works, the character explains, because it sounds "so boring, no one ever asks me about it."

"Belle can't tell anybody what she does," Piper says. "It's fear of judgment and repulsion and disgrace from her family, and so she doesn't really gamble with that."

For a show about sex, Diary doesn't show that much of it, but there are skimpy outfits and a little nudity. "You feel like you've seen more than you actually have," Piper says. However, "I don't want to do every sex scene in underwear, because that's not realistic. (Some) scenes require a bit of nipple and a lot of butt-baring."

Via usatoday.com