Secret Diary of a Call Girl

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Secret Diary of a Call Girl
Created by	Lucy Prebble
Starring	Billie Piper
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	8 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV2
Original run	28 September 2007 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile

Secret Diary of a Call Girl is a British television show on ITV2, based on the blogs of London call girl Belle de Jour. The rights to the blog were bought by Silverapples Media (Avril MacRory and Paul Duane), who co-produced the show with Tiger Aspect Productions. The series was initially developed with Channel 4 and when they passed on the project, ITV took over.^{[citation needed]}

Billie Piper plays the lead role of Belle, the eponymous call girl. The series began on Thursday 27 September 2007 at 10pm, as part of ITV2's XXL Thursday programming block. It is currently being repeated on Wednesdays on ITV1.

Billie Piper will return for the second season in 2008, which "will see Belle's life get more complicated."^[1] Filming for the second season began in May of 2008, despite Piper being in the early stages of pregnancy. The show is intending to bypass this by using a body double when required.

The series has been commissioned for a third season, even before the second season has been aired. Filming is expected to begin at the start of 2009, once Piper has given birth to her child.^[2]

1 Episodes
2 International airings
3 DVD release
4 Viewing figures
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Secret Diary of a Call Girl episodes

[edit] International airings

The show began its run on Showcase Television in Canada on November 22, 2007.

In the United States, Showtime will air the first season's eight half-hour episodes beginning in June 2008, with a commitment for an additional 12 episodes.^{[citation needed]} Robert Greenblatt, Showtime's president of entertainment, initially considered buying format rights and recasting it with American actors, but he ultimately decided that the original was "fantastic"; Greenblatt also noted that "it's very hard to find American actresses who are comfortable doing nudity."^[3]

In Sweden, Channel 5 started to air the series in early April 2008.

In New Zealand, Prime started to air the series at 9:30pm Thursday, 1 May 2008.

In Latin America, VH1 started to air the series at 10:00pm Monday, 5 May 2008, under the name "Diario de una Prostituta" (Diary of a Prostitute).

In France, Téva started to air the series on May 10, 2008.

[edit] DVD release

The first season was released on 7 January 2008.^[4] Several of the backing tracks that were used in the television series were not in the DVD, mainly because of licensing issues.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Viewing figures

The first series averaged 1,242,125 viewers. The following weekly viewership statistics are from the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board:^[5]

Episode number	Date of first broadcast	Total viewers
1	27 September 2007	1,997,000
2	4 October, 2007	1,475,000
3	11 October, 2007	1,098,000
4	18 October, 2007	1,108,000
5	25 October, 2007	1,077,000
6	1 November, 2007	1,003,000
7	8 November, 2007	1,194,000
8	15 November, 2007	985,000