LOS ANGELES—Adult Material, the long-awaited U.K. television miniseries set inside the porn industry, aired its first episode on Britain’s Channel 4 on Sunday. While critics gave the one-hour drama positive reviews, according to U.K. media reports, some viewers were left shocked by the show’s graphic content.
“I’m not being funny but all the previews looked like a story of a young powerful woman thriving in the adult industry and pure entertainment, not this dark, morally bankrupt head fuck,” wrote one viewer on social media, as quoted by The Daily Mail newspaper.
“It feels like as a viewer, it kind of feels by watching it you're part of the exploitation,” wrote another, quoted by The Mail. “The trailer blatantly missold this.”
The series is written and created by acclaimed British playwright Lucy Kirkwood, who said that the show will “look at how sex, power and consent are connected, giving a nod to recent real-world goings on.”
But viewers especially objected to a scene in which the daughter of protagonist and fictional porn performer Jolene Dollar is raped, only to receive a lecture from her mother about being “clearer with her dos and don'ts.”
Critics took a more enthusiastic view of the show, however. The Guardian and Telegraph newspapers rated the show four stars out of five, as did The Radio Times, which said that the drama “raises big questions about sex, consent and power — and will have you both laughing and crying.”
Guardian critic Lucy Mangan wrote that Adult Material “lays down a confident track through a dramatic subject that is thick with well-worn tropes and established points of view (from the idea that participants are victims or perpetrators to denial that there can be any such dynamic in this simple world of shame-free shagging) and yet avoids them all.”
Mangan also commended Kirkwood for depicting the porn industry as “neither unbearably seedy nor unutterably glamorous.”
Radio Times critic Flora Carr singled out the show’s star, Hayley Squires, for bringing “charm, humor and vulnerability to what already looks set to be an iconic television part” as Jolene.
The show also stars Phil Daniels — best known for his lead role in the cult-classic 1979 film adaptation of The Who’s Quadrophenia — as an adult film director, and veteran British actor Rupert Everett as producer “Carroll Quinn.”
Photo by Channel 4 YouTube Screen Capture
