Twenty five years ago, Band Of Gold debuted on ITV. Airing for three series, it was a rare beast in television: an honest depiction of the realities facing female sex workers in Britain. Since then, we have been offered little follow-up. Sex workers are often either collateral damage in crime dramas or mysteries or, in the case of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, a willing participant who never truly explores the true depths of the industry. The same can be said of pornography. Few dramas depict characters who work as porn actors. It is still a taboo. But writer Lucky Kirkwood is changing all of that with Adult Material, her new drama for Channel 4.
Jolene Dollar is a mum of three, loving and hard working. She keeps her children fed, clothed and in education, funding her and their lives with an unorthodox job: she is one of the country's most successful porn stars. Adult Material follows her life's ups and downs, and takes viewers on a rollercoaster after Jolene befriends a new porn performer and things get, well, complicated. It's full of surprises, portraying an industry that, until now, has been mocked or stereotyped in TV and film.
'For many of us, porn affects the most intimate parts of our lives', Lucy explains in Channel 4's promotional material. 'This happens in ways we're aware of, but more often, in ways we aren't. It's also an industry that reflects how we live now in so many ways, the blurring of the lines between what is real and what is fake, employment in the age of zero hours contracts, the revolutions brought by the internet, how we parent our kids, and the difficult compromises women are forced to make, to balance breadwinning and caregiving.
'We wanted to make adult material because porn is in so many of our homes', she adds. 'Yet most of us know nothing about how it is made, or the people who make it. The last decades have bought huge and brilliant leaps forward in female led porn, which are highly, rightly celebrated. But mainstream porn, the majority of stuff our kids are accessing on hub sites, is still an overwhelmingly violent and objectifying place. It's designed to make the people on our screens less than human cartoon characters to get off to who those people when the cameras stopped rolling, perhaps we think we know, perhaps we find them funny, or tragic. Or perhaps our ideas are rooted in 70s nostalgia. But these are real, modern women, and men with kids, mums, bills, pets, dinners that need cooking, and washing that needs hanging out.'
'I don’t necessarily understand the mindset of it, but it fascinates me to this day, the physical and mental act of doing that job,' says Hayley Squires, who plays Hayley Burrows - aka Jolene Dollar. 'And when she became a mother, that’s what her life is about, giving her children the best opportunities possible and protecting them. Having read all four scripts, there’s no way an actor wouldn’t want to go on that ride from where she begins to where she ends up, and it’s different to any part I’ve played before.'
The show, a four-part series of one hour long episodes, also stars Rupert Everett, Siena Kelly, Joe Dempsie and Julien Ovenden.
Adult Material is on Channel 4 tonight at 10pm
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