Ellen Gray: 'Call Girl' a cleaner view of prostitution

SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL. 10:30 tonight, Showtime.

'THE FIRST thing you should know about me is that I'm a whore," Hannah [Billie Piper] tells us as she heads off to an appointment, dressed in a stylish black business suit and pearls.

Welcome to "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," a British import that Showtime's launching tonight after the Season 4 premiere of "Weeds."

If you're already down with a dope-dealing soccer mom, then you're not likely to judge Hannah - or Belle, as her customers know her - very harshly.

Indeed, "Secret Diary," which is based on the book, "The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl," by one, er, Belle de Jour, and adapted for the small screen by the more prosaically named Lucy Prebble, is to real-life prostitution what HBO's "Big Love" is to real-life polygamy: sanitized for your protection.

"I should say upfront that I wasn't abused by a relative, I've got no children to support and I've never been addicted to anything. . . . I'm very high-class, which means I charge by the hour - and I charge a lot," Hannah/Belle continues.

She's also decently educated, well-read and comes from what appears to be a loving, intact family that doesn't have a clue what she's up to.

That's not quite the backstory we heard about the high-priced but maybe not-so-happy hooker who helped sink New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is it?

Still, Belle has her reasons for pursuing the world's oldest profession, and they're reasons many men who pay for sex no doubt want to believe: "I love sex, and I love money."

The same could be said by many a television network, particularly those like Showtime that rely on subscribers, not advertisers, to pay the bills.

But if you're hoping for anything even as explicit as Showtime's "Californication," you'll likely be disappointed in "Secret Diary," where the actress, who played one of the more celebrated companions of the modern era's "Doctor Who," manages to make the most of her character's lingerie wardrobe.

She does talk a good game, rattling on at least as much as David Duchovny does in "Californication" and breaking the fourth wall so often you'd think her clients might feel ignored.

Fortunately for "Secret Diary," which starts off feeling like a too-brittle comedy about hapless johns, Hannah/Belle's not the most reliable of witnesses.

Sex for money might seem a fair trade to her, but as the season's eight episodes progress, and she's forced to open her life to a bit of outside scrutiny, cracks begin to appear in the facade.

And while that's not enough to turn her into a victim - we're not talking Lifetime here - it does gradually transform her into the character Showtime most needs her to be: someone whose company might actually be worth paying for.

I've never been much of a fan of "Weeds" (10 tonight, Showtime), which explains why the apparent destruction of the fictional town of Agrestic in one of those California wildfires didn't register with me till I saw tonight's Season 4 premiere.

But as Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) fled the flames - which she seems to have fanned - moving her family to a coastal town conveniently located near the Mexican border, I did see something hopeful rising from the ashes in the casting of Albert Brooks as Nancy's father-in-law, Lenny, whose jousting with the woman he calls "Not-Francie" gave even this "Weeds"-hater something to smile about. *

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