TV REVIEW : ‘Band of Gold’ Chronicles Lives of Prostitutes

Seldom has the dramatization of the oldest profession appeared this uncompromising or clear-eyed.

Perhaps one reason the six-part British series “Band of Gold,” debuting tonight, cuts close to workaday prostitution is that a woman, English author Kay Mellor, researched and wrote it.

Another explanation is the depth and variety of the actors. Although an ensemble work, the performances are paced by the vivid Cathy Tyson and Geraldine James’ aging professional. They tip this fictional series in the direction of a docudrama.

The result is alternately harrowing and human, a chronicle of women friends who “walk the lane,” as they put it. Set in the real blue-collar city of Bradford in northern England, “Band of Gold” is secondarily an adult thriller punctuated by an unseen killer who preys on hookers, but that’s not really what the series is about.

Tonight’s episode focuses on a well-meaning homemaker and mother (Ruth Gemmell), estranged from a loving but hapless husband and at her wit’s end trying to ward off a creepy loan shark. Her friend is a spirited street woman (the perfectly cast Tyson) who tells her friend, “I’m not ashamed of what I do. Them that do it become whores. Them that don’t do it become whore-wives.”

When the desperate wife opts to hit the streets herself, Tyson’s character is jubilant at the idea of working as a team. The naive mom, though, is not out to make a career of it: “I don’t want to make a fortune. I just want to pay my loan off.”

So begins the absorbing, crushingly unglamorous, unsexy odyssey of a band of women, with either husbands, parents in the row houses or kids to pick up at school and take to the park. They grow increasingly entangled and close in the episodes to come.

Their domestic lives, not the streets, propel events. The tone and style are surprisingly consistent given that “Band of Gold” is directed by three directors (Richard Standeven, Richard Laxton and Charles Beeson) who each helm two episodes.

If anything is overwrought, it is Tyson’s compulsion to scrub and bleach everything with disinfectant. And the script’s view of men, including even the nominally sympathetic, leaves no room for male bonding.

But the impulse of “Band of Gold” is singularly distinctive and a fresh antidote to the usual movie about prostitutes. Titillation and any hint of erotic imagery will not be found here nor will your standard hooker with a heart of gold.

The scenes with customers are often comical. The funniest encounter is Tyson’s weekly appointment with a puppy dog of a middle-aged hanger-on whose favorite parlor game with his golden girl is to sit in a stuffed chair and arouse himself.

* “Band of Gold” airs tonight, 10 p.m.-midnight, on HBO. Subsequent episodes air on Mondays, 11-midnight.