Lip Service: Episode 1

It’s been a long time coming - and the shadow of Showtime's original lesbian drama looms large and lengthy - but finally, we have our own answer to The L Word.

It’s pretty much unavoidable to compare BBC Three's Lip Service with the aforementioned show, particularly when it seems determined to plough exactly the same furrows: there’s a group of smart, sassy, sexy young lesbians, all in professional careers that closely mirror those of their US counterparts.

Nowhere is this cookie-cutter carbon copy attitude more apparent than in the character of Frankie, who, like The L Word's Shane, is a bruised, shagging, punky, funky, shaggy-haired artisan with a somewhat androgynous name, complete with the original’s habit of crossing her arms above her head when distressed. It’s a testament to actress Ruta Gedmintas that, even when operating within such sharply defined lines, she manages to add some shading of her own: the front she puts up isn’t quite as focussed and secure as Shane’s, for instance.

If a version of fan favourite Shane is included, therefore so must an Alice, and indeed we have a perkily naïve blonde in Fiona Button’s Tess. She provides the episode’s only ‘lipstick lesbian’ moment, and this is an important moment to make. In the month where the BBC reported back that its depiction of ladies who love ladies was generally positive, it also found that too often, gay characters were simply defined as that: in other words, they were defined by their sexuality, and it wasn’t merely incidental.

The impressive thing about The L Word right from the start was that it never played that game: not only was there not nearly as much girl on girl action as your sweaty memory thinks it remembers, but the storylines were not always about the girls relationships with each other.

It’s a little unfair to judge a series purely on its opening episode, but we’re going to. Sadly it is true that, for the moment (apart from a burgeoning subplot regarding Frankie’s aunt), all the opening plot points rest heavily on the relationships - sexual, ongoing, destroyed - between these women. There’s no doubt that things will ease up as we move along, but, as yet, there’s not a great deal to suggest that Lip Service is fighting to have its own character. That said, there’s enough potential hidden away to suggest that these girls may transcend those expectations.



Airs at 10.30pm on Tuesday 12th October 2010 on BBC Three.

> Buy the DVD on Amazon.

Reviewed by Andrew Allen.