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Hulu's Harlots Isn't Your Typical TV Show About Prostitutes

Downton Abbey veteran Jessica Brown Findlay stars in the 18th Century-set drama

By Chris Harnick Mar 09, 2017 5:00 PMTags
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Harlots isn't your typical show about prostitutes. Far from it.

The new Hulu series starring Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown Findlay–yes, Lady Sybil is a prostitute now¬—hails from a creative team made up entirely of women. The directors, writers and executive producers are all female. Moira Buffini and Alison Newman created the period drama that stars Findlay, Samantha Morton, Lesley Manville and Eloise Smyth. Alison Owen, Debra Hayward and Alison Carpenter also serve as executive producers on the 18th Century-set drama about brothels in London and E! News has your exclusive first look at the show's poster and new trailer, above and below, respectively.

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Harlots follows Margaret Wells (Morton), a brothel owner struggling to reconcile that role with playing mother to daughters Charlotte (Findlay) and Lucy (Smyth). Things get even more complicated (and nasty) when rival madam Lydia Quigley (Manville) targets Margaret's brothel. Again, this isn't your typical show about prostitutes, as you can clearly see in the action-packed trailer.

At TCA, Buffini said the creators dove deep into researching the brothel life of 18th Century London and inspiration came from a book: Harris's List of Convent Garden Ladies, "which was a sort of London guide to whoring that was a best-seller yearly from the 1760s up to the 1800s," she said.

Owen said the show set at from the very beginning to tell the story of the female gaze.

"Prostitutes and brothels are not a new subject. They've been a familiar trope of these media since time began. And we were very determined to make something very different. So rather than it being prurient and titillating, we had our rule from the beginning was ‘everything from the whore's eye view,'" Owen told press. "So everything is looking out rather than looking in at these women.  That's not to say that can't have lots of fun. And you'll see that there's as much male nudity as there is female nudity in the program. But that was very important for us for it to be empowering, to look at these women in a different way -- to see how they looked at the world rather than to see how men looked at them. There's no male gaze. It's all looking outwards."

Harlots premieres Wednesday, March 29 on Hulu.