BBC’S hot new drama – that’s already been shown on ITV
RAUNCHY “new” BBC costume drama Harlots was in fact first screened on rival channel ITV.
Critics are getting hot under the collar over the steamy series, which is packed with sex and violence.
The first three episodes alone feature rape, an orgy and virgins being sold off to the highest bidder.
But thousands of UK viewers have already seen the show, starring Lesley Manville, Samantha Morton and Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay.
It was commissioned in 2016 by ITV Encore and US “streamer” Hulu.three series have been shown but Encore no longer exists and Hulu has cancelled it.
With gaps in the BBC schedule due to the shutdown of drama production amid the pandemic, bosses decided to pick up the show earlier this month.
Two series will air this summer, with the third to run later.
Harlots is based on the bawdy Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies from the late 1700s, which was used by men as a guide to prostitutes in salacious detail.
Andrew Allison, from the Freedom Association which campaigns against the licence fee, said: “Unlike other broadcasters, the BBC’S income has barely fallen since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, yet it appears that its advance planning is so woeful that it has to buy a three-year-old series which has an orgy and lots of other unsavoury things in it, just as a schedule filler. So much for public service broadcasting.”
Express columnist Ann Widdecombe added: “It’s just a desire to be at the forefront of what they describe as cutting edge. Everyone else would describe it as bad taste and over-the-top.
“It’s sewn into everything they do, both comedy and drama.
The whole thing now has got to be sex, bad language and violence.”
But defending the show, Sue Deeks, head of programme acquisition at the BBC, said: “Harlots brings 18th-century London to life with enormous style, wit, intelligence and humour.”