Before we consider the political and moral implications of an aspirational prime-time drama about a prostitute, can I just say that Secret Diary of a Call Girlis a blast? In a nutshell, every day Billie Piper (Belle/Hannah) wakes up in her lovely flat. It’s sunny, so she meets up with a friend for coffee. Then she gets a phonecall and leaves to go and have expensive sex with someone.

Although you don’t see woo-woos and pee-pees – or, indeed, hubblie-bubblies – it is blowjobs, spankings, thrusting and lube all the way. In the first episode, Piper has three blowjobs, two shags, uses a vibrator on herself, applies lube to her twit-twoo, and rides on a man’s back in a saddle, spanking him with a whip. It will, I should imagine, make pretty pivotal viewing for any 12 to 15-year-old out there – in the same way that my pivotal sexual experience was A Sense of Guilt. And Alan Alda in M*A*S*H – but that’s a different story all together.

If we are ranking SDOACG against other glossy dramas about women’s sex lives, Sex and the City was, in comparison, fantastically complex. There are no lawyers, commitment issues, cancer, children or hymnals to New York City here. This is just Sex. Eight episodes, which is about 39 shags, judging by the rate of the first episode, and not a whole lot else.

Of course, the arguments for and against the concept of the show are brief but pertinent. On the one hand, this is a script written by women, from a book by a woman, starring a very strong female lead, about sex that is creative, beautiful and consensual. While the majority of TV sex still centres around bedraggled women being raped in car parks, SDOACG counts as a positive thing.

On the other hand, this is a glossy show about a woman having a lot of sex – but only because she is being paid for it. Given that women consist of 52 per cent of the population, and have sex all the time, it is still fairly outrageous that the first big British drama about women having lots of sex centres on a prostitute in a luxury West London flat, servicing horrible old businessmen.

Do you know what, though? That is not really SDOACG’s problem. That is a problem with this country’s entire attitude towards women, sex and horrible old businessmen. As far as SDOACGis concerned, I think that it is actually far more significant that Piper both looks and is absolutely dynamite in this – part elemental child, part raging sex-bag, and capable of delivering a one-liner during a blowjob. As far as British female TV talent goes, she is pretty much where it’s at right now, and in her silver dresses, silk knickers and Louise Brooks wigs, a lot of people are going to be having “special thoughts” about her tonight. To be honest, even I might, if I can’t find any reruns of M*A*S*H on UKTV Gold.

Flight of the Conchords is, nutshell-wise, the New Zealand version of The Mighty Boosh. Jermaine Clement and Brett McKenzie are a long-standing institution in New Zealand, from where their digi-folk parodies and impressively low-key comic delivery have got them a Sony Award-winning Radio 2 show.

Now we have their HBO show on import. The premise is simple – an aimless Kiwi digi-folk two-piece move to New York to “make it”. What distinguishes Flight of the Conchords from everything else, however, is that this is the first sitcom musical. Yes – my final TV dream has finally come true.

It is a proper musical, too – not just men singing a song occasionally. The songs extrapolate, move scenes on and impart information, just like Rodgers and Hammerstein. While deadpan in their day-to-day affairs, in song, Clement and McKenzie can suddenly express what they have secretly been thinking – “You’re so beautiful, like a part-time model or high-class prostitute”; “I’m not crying because you left me today/ It’s just my eye is/ Sweaty”; and, just before a seduction, in a painful falsetto: “My room is usually/ Tidier than this.” There is also immense kudos for the joyous Dad-ness of the Fleetwood Mac joke: “Some of their best work came out of that sordid love triangle.” “Rumours?” “No, it was all true.”

The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Thur, ITV2, 10pm; Flight of the Conchords, Mon, BBC Four, 9pm

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