‘Harlots’: Hulu’s Steamy New Feminist Historical Drama — About Sex Workers

Hulu‘s Spring 2017 slate features returning favorites (The Mindy Project and The Path) and exciting new dramas (The Handmaid’s Tale and National Treasure), but there’s one show flying under the radar that we think you should sit up and take notice of.
Harlots is a fresh and feminist look at the lives of 18th century sex workers in London. Samantha Morton stars as Margaret Wells, an earthy brothel madam who sees prostitution as a way up for her family and her “girls.” Downton Abbey‘s Jessica Brown Findlay plays her older daughter, Charlotte, a glamorous courtesan, and Eloise Smyth is her virgin daughter Lucy. The family’s future is put in peril when they find themselves embroiled in a turf war with a high class madam named Lydia Quigley played by Lesley Manville.

The show has an all-female production team. It’s led by Executive Producers Debra Hayward and Alison Owen and Executive Producer and Co-Creator Moira Buffini. During the panel, they said that they strove to find all female directors. “It was really important for us right from the beginning to make it all about the female gaze,” said Owen. “Prostitutes and brothels are not a new subject. They’ve been a familiar trope in media since time began…Our rule from the beginning was ‘Everything from the whore’s eye view.’ Everything is looking out rather than looking in at these women.”
Series co-creator Moira Buffini said that the show is deeply rooted in real events. She said, “We historically researched this to the nth degree. We were inspired by a book called Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, which was a sort of ‘London Guide to Whoring,’ which was a bestseller, really from the 1760s to the 1800s. And the language of this book — there are several editions of it still existing in various libraries — the language of this book is so stunning.”

“A good review would be something like ‘Her bosom enchants to rapture…’ and you’d get two paragraphs detailing exactly how beautiful a woman was. And then a bad review would be something like, ‘She’s a smirking, lecherous hussy. In short, a vile bitch.’ The language was one of the things that really inspired and excited me to write these women’s stories.”

When I asked the panel about the trickiness inherent in covering sex work, a topic rife with controversy to this day, they didn’t seem cowered by the potential landmines.

“We thought what we have to do is write from our own hearts, courageously,” Buffini said. “Nobody wants to see a timid piece of work. We just want to write courageously and it has to be what we feel and think and believe as women.”

The panel also discussed the irony that prostitution was one of the only ways a woman could be socially mobile in that time. So much so that Samantha Morton’s character doesn’t want to wed her longtime partner despite the stability of their relationship. Why? She’d forfeit all her money, rights, and property to him. Buffini commented, “It’s a show about economics as much as it is about sex work. I think the economics of this world are so all-consuming as it were.”

 Of course, as quickly as a girl could rise in the world of prostitution, she could also fall. “It’s as if they’re dancing on the edge all the time, but they really dance,” said Buffini.
Harlots debuts on Hulu on March 29, 2017.