Harlots

Starring

• Samantha Mortonas Margaret Wells

  A brothel keeper, prostituted as a child by her rival, who fights to move up in the world and secure her daughters' future.

  Margaret Wells’s story

  Margaret wants a better house in Greek Street, and to pay for it she auctions the virginity of her teenage daughter, Lucy, as she once sold Charlotte's: the sexual abuse of her own daughters, treated as business. She survives Lydia's raids and a body left in her new house, and when Sir George attacks Lucy, she kills him. In the second series, to save Lucy from Lord Fallon's blackmail, she confesses to the killing and is sentenced to hang; at the last moment Josiah Hunt stops the execution and ships her to America. She returns a year later, married to an American landowner, just before Charlotte dies. With Nancy she confronts Isaac Pincher, whom they suspect, and when he turns on Emily Lacey, Nancy kills him. Margaret leaves again for America. Lucy will not come.

• Lesley Manvilleas Lydia Quigley

  The ruthless keeper of the grandest house in Golden Square, who supplies girls to a secret club of powerful men.

  Lydia Quigley’s story

  Lydia prostituted Margaret and Nancy when they were children, and now she sets out to ruin Margaret's new house: she sends constables, sets a religious zealot on her and leaves a dead girl in her rooms. She procures unwilling girls for the Spartans, a secret club of powerful men, and learns that they rape and murder them. When Charlotte seems to desert her mother, Lydia takes her in. Jailed by a new magistrate and bailed out by Charlotte, she keeps trading until her own son has her committed to Bedlam. There she befriends Kate, escapes with her and makes her the Prince's mistress. She has Lucy jailed for debt to protect Blayne, but when Blayne turns up at Golden Square, she and Lucy kill him together. She lets Kate go, and ends the series sharing a drink with Lucy.

• Jessica Brown Findlayas Charlotte Wells

  Margaret's elder daughter, London's most celebrated courtesan, who plots against Lydia and later runs her mother's house.

  Charlotte Wells’s story

  Sexually abused as a child when her mother sold her virginity, Charlotte is now London's most celebrated courtesan, kept by the jealous Sir George Howard. She leaves him, penniless, meaning to sail for America with Daniel Marney, and when Sir George is killed they are both arrested on a servant's lie. Freed, she seems to desert her mother for Lydia's house, meaning to bring it down from inside, and fails to save a girl Lydia has trapped. She becomes Lady Isabella's lover, and after Margaret is sent away, runs Greek Street with her. When the Pincher brothers burn her house she fights back, makes a truce and falls for Isaac. Just after her mother's return, as the brothers fight over her at a boxing match, Hal pushes her from a staircase by accident, and she dies.

• Eloise Smythas Lucy Wells

  Margaret's younger daughter, whose virginity is auctioned and who becomes a reluctant harlot, then a businesswoman in her own right.

  Lucy Wells’s story

  Lucy is still a teenager when her mother auctions her virginity to pay for the new house: sexual abuse, counted in her mother's trade as business. She struggles as a harlot and shies from Lord Fallon's cruelty; when Sir George attacks her she fights him off, and Margaret kills him. In the second series she becomes Fallon's kept woman, gives him a false alibi when he is accused of stabbing Amelia, and watches her mother confess to Sir George's killing to protect her. A year on, she opens a secret house for gay men behind a tailor's shop, and will not follow Margaret to America. Jailed for debt by Lydia to keep her from exposing Blayne, she confronts Lydia once freed, and when Blayne arrives, the two women kill him together, then share a drink.

• Kate Fleetwoodas Nancy Birch

  Margaret's fiercely loyal childhood friend, who runs a house specialising in flagellation and stands by the Wells women.

• Liv Tyleras Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam

  A noblewoman whose brother controls her money and raped her as a child, and who becomes Charlotte's friend and lover.

Why it matters

Harlots looks at Georgian London's sex trade from the side of the women who ran it and worked in it. Its creators, Moira Buffini and Alison Newman, drew on Hallie Rubenhold's history The Covent Garden Ladies and on Harris's List, the period's annual guide to the city's prostitutes, and the producers chose women to write and direct it; one of them, Alison Owen, said there was no male gaze. Buffini said they had chosen to write about how these women survived rather than how they were oppressed. The series treats sex work as the trade that offered women money and some independence when marriage offered neither, without hiding its cost: girls sold to powerful men, mothers who were themselves prostituted as children. The Hollywood Reporter's critic saw parallels with modern cases of underage trafficking. It leaves open whether a freedom bought this way can ever be free.