I previewed Dirty Lines as the Netherlands’ answer to Sex Education in my review of Amsterdam Vice, which I compared to The Deuce. Having watched all six episodes of the series (sadly, there are only six), I can confirm it’s just as wholesome.
Sex Education is about teenagers at a modern-day British high school. The main character of Dirty Lines, played by Joy Delima, is a sexology student at the University of Amsterdam in the late 1980s. The Dutch show is a little grittier (it’s 1980s Amsterdam) and a little more mature, but in terms of topics and humor it has a lot in common with Sex Education. Both are on Netflix.
Dirty Lines is roughly inspired by the true story of the first Dutch phone-sex company, Teleholding, renamed “Teledutch” for the purpose of the series. The two co-founders, played by Minne Koole and Chris Peters, are the other main characters of the show.
Along the way, we get a peek of the infamous nightclub RoXY, where Eddy De Clercq brought house music to the Netherlands, and the luxury brothel Yab Yum, which was shuttered by the city in 2008. There is sex (of course), romance, Ferraris, friendship and XTC — everything you would expect from 1980s Amsterdam.
