TVSquad

(S01E01) Right after Weeds, we got our first look at Showtime's new original comedy series Secret Diary of a Call Girl. The half-hour show stars Billie Piper as Belle du Jour, a high-class London call girl. Tonight we got to meet Belle, who is Hannah the legal secretary by day, her agent Stephanie, her best friend Ben and a few of her clients.

We also got to hear Belle's rules: keep her two lives completely separate and stay in control. (There were others but those were the important ones.)

Then we got to see Belle break said rules.

In a rare move, a US network has picked up a British television program and decided not to make an American version. According to Zap2It.com, Showtime so fell in love with Billie Piper's (Doctor Who's Rose) performance as the titular character Hannah/Belle that they've decided to just bring over the British version of Secret Diary of a Call Girl as is. Based on real-life diaries, the comedy Call Girl features Piper as secretary Hannah by day, call girl Belle by night and proved to be a big hit for the UK's ITV2.

Showtime will air the eight-episode first season in spring or summer of '08. It's no wonder, with the popular (even in the US) Piper attached, that Showtime decided not to make an Americanized version. Well, that and the fact that most of the time when we Americanize a British hit show we destroy it (Absolutely Fabulous, Coupling). Hell, even The Office was a near disaster. Honestly, I don't get it. I guess American studios think we Americans are too dumb to "get" British shows.

Sodoku seems to be sweeping the world, isn't it? There seems to be a puzzle in every newspaper in the country now, becoming more popular than the crossoword, word find, and Jumble, all at once. Well, in England, the craze has graduated to the next logical step: Sodoku is getting its own TV show! ITV2, the UK's most watched digital channel, will air an audience-participation Sodoku game, where viewers call in to a toll number (the call will cost 60p) and give their solutions to the 9x9 number puzzle, with the chance to win cash prizes large and small.

Sounds scintillating. Reminds me of the video game program that was on Channel 11 here in New York (WPIX), where kids would call in and yell "PIX! PIX! PIX!" in order to move the gun/shooter/runner/etc. on an Intellivision video game. All that show did was make me want to buy an Intellivision and play the game myself. But I was stuck with an Atari. Ah, well.