New Netflix Series On The Beginnings Of Sex Phone Lines In Holland

Netflix
NFLX
has released a new series, Dirty Lines, about the first phone sex lines in The Netherlands. Produced by Fiction Valley, and created by Pieter Bart Korthuis, Dirty Lines is a fun, sexy, and easily binged Dutch series with only six episodes for this first season.

Set in the late 1980s Amsterdam, Dirty Lines follows psychology student Marly Salomon (played by Joy Delima) as she takes on a side job for a brand new company named Teledutch. Created by two brothers, Frank (Minne Koole) and Ramon Stitger (Chris Peters), Teledutch is Holland’s, and Europe’s, first erotic telephone lines. The two brothers soon make a fortune with the unexpected over-popularity of the phone lines. This very short six-episode-long series shows how Marly, a rather shy and prude student, becomes involved in the development and expansion of Teledutch.

Dirty Lines is an entertaining period series, inspired by real events taking place in Holland at the end of the 1980s. It is a colorful and vibrant portrayal of the Dutch youth in that period, with the end of the Cold war and the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the beginnings of House music, and the proliferation of a new drug.

As the series begins, the fictional sex phone line company, Teledutch, is at the height of its success. Three years earlier, at the infancy of the company, psychology student Marly is till living at home with her parents. With the help of her best friend Janna (played by Julia Akkermans), Marly soon finds a job at Teledutch, recording tapes for their sex phone line, and is able to move out of her parents’. Running parallel to Marly’s story is that of the two brothers, Frank and Ramon, and how they developed their erotic phone line business. Their new company deeply affects their respective marriages in very different ways.

Dirty Lines is entirely told through the perspective of the character of Marly, who narrates how she began to work for the erotic telephone line company. Dirty Lines is Marly’s coming-of-age story, as she is shown growing in confidence, affirming her opinions and her sexuality, thus suggesting that working at Teledutch helped her emancipation. It is also through the influence of her best friend Janna, a free-spirited character, that Marly comes out of her shell.

Inspired by a true story, Dirty Lines is adapted from Fred Saueressig’s book, 06-Cowboys. Saueressig worked for the first Dutch phone sex line in the late 1980s. Dirty Lines shows how sex phone lines started to establish themselves in the 1980s, and how they quickly became a great success for those who created them and the telephone line companies. Phone sex lines of the late 1980s and 1990s catered predominantly to men and male sexual fantasies.

A series on phone sex lines would thus be expected to focus solely on male sexual fantasies. However Marly’s character readjusts this imbalance. Through Marly’s character, women are shown to have more agency in this company than would have been expected. She is the one who writes all the stories being recorded on tape, and it is her stories that make the phone sex lines become popular. Marly’s character in Dirty Lines offers a different perspective, one perhaps more attuned with a contemporary audience. A psychology student at university, Marly follows sexology classes, in which she will decide to write her thesis on female sexuality. Many times during the episodes, Marly addresses the audience directly to rectify a preconceived notion about female sexuality.

Joy Delima is great as the prude Marly who grows in confidence. She brings all the characters of this story together, as each of their personal dramas are tied into the narrative quite flawlessly. Each episodes flows quite seamlessly together, as the six episodes jumps through the three years that marked the success of Teledutch.