`HARLOTS' HOOKS
‘Harlots’ peddles in thought-provoking tale of rival brothels
Lady Sybil has become a working girl. Jessica Brown Findlay, the popular “Downton Abbey” star, plays a prostitute in the new Hulu series “Harlots” (premiering Wednesday). Forgive the salacious hook for a show that is not so much titillating as it is gripping, surprising, at times humorous and even a bit thought-provoking when it comes to exploring how sex is just as valuable as money or power. At its core, “Harlots” is about two businesses stooping to some of the most underhanded tactics to outmaneuver each other. In that respect, “Harlots” is no different from a nighttime soap like “Dallas” — except most of this excellent cast happens to be female, much of the key talent behind the camera is female (including creators Moira Buffini and Alison Newman), and the businesses in question happen to be brothels. It's 1763, and, according to this show, one in five women in London were involved in the sex trade. “Harlots” suggests that at a time when women had no economic prospects beyond marriage, the smart ones realized the only thing they could control was their own bodies. Margaret Wells (Oscar nominee Samantha Morton, “In America”) runs her girls essentially out of a hovel, but she's looking to relocate to a better neighborhood. Her move is threatened by some holy rollers and the law, which does not take kindly to her keeping an “obscene and bawdy house.” Maggie learns she is being targeted by Lydia Quigley (Lesley Manville), a rival brothel owner whose grudge goes back decades. Lydia's business is more upscale. Her ladies can dance, speak French and converse on topics of the day. Her callers include those prominent in the clergy and the judiciary. Her top worker, Charlotte (Brown-Findlay), just so happens to be Maggie's oldest daughter.
Charlotte is pursued by a lord who wishes her to sign a contract essentially making her his property. “I don't want to be owned like your wife,” she says to him.
“Harlots” manages to mince the familiar stereotypes of hookers with hearts of gold as well as prostitutes as victims.
Maggie needs cash — and the only way to raise it is to auction off the virginity of her teenage daughter Lucy (Eloise Smyth).
The second episode gets even darker and richer as Lydia risks her business to satisfy a ruthless proposition while Maggie uses a dying street walker to exact some revenge on Lydia's house. Of the cast, Manville is a riot as a pastyfaced procurer with a diabolical imagination.
“When I want fatuous, dull-witted commentary, I will buy a parrot,” she snarls at one of her girls.
The premiere opens with a curious device. One of the women reads aloud from a paperback reviewing her colleagues by appearance and performance. As odd as it sounds, this is not fiction. “Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies” was an annual directory published from 1757 to 1795 that catalogued the prostitutes, about 120, in London's West End — sort of a pre-internet, pre-Yelp for working girls.
“Harlots” finds so much to say about our obsession with sex.