This Is Hardcore:Adult Material.

"I've seen the storyline played out so many times before. Oh, that goes in there then that goes in there then that goes in there then that goes in there and then it's over. Oh, what a hell of a show" - This Is Hardcore, Pulp.

Imagine the cast of Shameless indulging in a loveless orgy with the production values of a third rate hip-hop video in a generic industrial unit in Park Royal watched over by a middle aged man vaping and displaying the crack of his arse like a builder bending over to pick up a brick. It's unlikely that that scenario will cause you to become aroused and in that I think Adult Material (Channel 4) has succeeded in its mission because Adult Material may be about pornography but it most definitely is not pornography.

The four part series tells the story of Jolene Dollar (Hayley Squires, so good in I, Daniel Blake back in 2016), a 30 (or 33, or maybe 35) year old adult actress and the trials and tribulations that befall her as she ages in the industry, deals with family issues, hits the bottle, undergoes a stressful court case, and looks back at her own life and wonders if she, somewhere along the line, has been used and abused.

She takes the younger Amy (Siena Kelly) under her wing as if to protect her from making the same mistakes she has but Amy, a dancer who claims "I love sex" and once performed as Scary in a Spice Girls tribute band, is ambiguous at best regarding this unsolicited offer of guardianship. Amy loves Jolene the porno star but she seems indifferent to Hayley, Jolene's real name as well as that of the woman who plays her, and her real life.

Jolene's/Hayley's marriage to everyman Rich (Joe Dempsie) is crumbling, sex without the cameras on doesn't seem to cut it for her, and her eldest daughter Phoebe (Alex Jarrett) is getting bullied at school. She has a sex toy replica of her mum's shaven pussy thrown at her and that mum's bright pink car has the legend SLAG sprayed on to it in large black letters.

Work's not going much better either. Jolene gets chlamydia in her eye and has to wear an eyepatch like Gabrielle or the maracas player in Dr Hook and the possibility of an anal scene with the American Tom Pain (Julian Ovenden) is obviously dredging up some very bad memories for Jolene as she wipes spunk off her face and makes notes of household chores while she's shagged from behind up against a washing machine.

Pain's the baddie of the piece. He's said to vomit in the mouths of women dressed up as eleven year olds, he doesn't 'do' MILFs but will make an exception for Jolene, and he's not happy about having to spend time in Britain as we witness in one exchange with Rupert Everett's utterly ludicrous porn baron Caroll Quinn:-

Tom:- "This is a backward fucking country"

Carroll:- "Yeah, sorry mate" 

Carroll's rarely seen out of his dressing gown or floating on an inflatable in his pool. His long grey hair give him the air of an LA mogul who's grown so powerful that nobody in his circle dare tell him he looks a prick but his accent and his manner are pure working class London. Phil Daniels' Dave, a director who works for Carroll, plays it as if he's in a Confessions film with Robin Askwith. He's the one with the vape and the builder's bum.

Both of them ooze sleaze. But despite these ludicrous caricatures, some jarring visuals (a shunga image of octopus cunnilingus, anyone?), and an utterly dreadful cover version of The Bee Gee's Stayin' Alive being used on the soundtrack, Adult Material does, eventually, develop into quite a compelling drama and the points it makes regarding the pros and cons of pornography are not as one sided as they may first appear.

Written by Lucy Kirkwood and directed by Dawn Shadforth (who's made music videos for Bjork, Kylie Minogue, Primal Scream, The Streets, Tinie Tempah, and Charli XCX and it shows in Adult Material which often feels like one long and noisy pop music video), it'd be foolhardy to make claims that this series is anything like as incisive or groundbreaking as Michaela Coel's recent I May Destroy You but alongside jokes about an awards ceremony called the SHAFTAs and Carroll's declaration that Amy is "mad as a spoon" an idea is laid bare that porn, ultimately, desexualises the sexual experience. 

It renders sex transactional, turns it into a product and leaves many of its viewers, and participants, feeling unsatisfied, unwholesome, and unreal. A most unedifying feeling and, perhaps, one that should be fully expected and fully deserved if you enter into a sexual relationship looking for anything more than love, compassion, comfort, or even simple cheap thrills.

Adult Material has its cake and eats it. Alongside serious issues regarding consent, alcoholism (the wine that Jolene regularly consumes at all hours is very much the Chekhov's gun of this story), and the story of a woman whose life is collapsing around her, who realises she's made mistakes in her life and is determined to put them right on her own and not other's terms, there are jokes about sagging tits and Botox and Ovenden's Tom Pain gets to deliver two lines I don't think I've ever heard said before:-

"You saved my life, you crazy cunt"

"All I want is a double espresso and to eat your pussy"

This changing of tack from serious drama to borderline comedy is indelicately handled but doesn't detract too much from the show when you get used to how unorthodox it is. The soundtrack, limp Bee Gees cover aside, is great. Alongside Laura Branigan's Gloria, Bow Wow Wow's I Want Candy, Baccara's Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, and Thelma Houston's Don't Leave Me This Way we get to hear Sinead O'Connor covering Nirvana's All Apologies, Ann Peebles' Breaking Up Somebody's Home, and, best of all, Why'd Ya Do It? from Marianne Faithful's 1979 LP Broken English. 

A song Lee Savage used to play to me as he drove me round Tadley in his Austin Maxi and includes lines about a woman with "cobwebs up her fanny", fellatio, and a "barbed wire pussy". It seemed apt for Adult Material. Kerry Godliman (Ricky Gervais' deceased wife in After Life) has a great role as Stella Maitland, an MP and anti-porn campaigner who debates the ethics of pornography with Jolene and guest star Joan Bakewell (the real one) on a chat show and is later discovered to have downloaded a huge stash of porn herself:- "vanilla stuff, lesbians with tattoos and little tits".

Stella and Jolene form a love-hate relationship which seems to echo almost every other relationship in Jolene's life, those with her children, her partner, Amy, Carroll, and even Tom Pain - and it was a love hate relationship I developed with Adult Material. I enjoyed watching it but, afterwards, I felt a bit dirty. Now what does that remind you of?