Dirty Lines is a Netflix original series which debuted in 2022. It is a Dutch series, set in the Amsterdam of the late 1980s.
In this time, telephone sex-lines was a booming business in the Netherlands. When Marly is looking for a job, she is advised by her friend to narrate an erotic story for new company Teledutch. A documentary is filmed about the business while she is there and her face is on television, to the horror of her parents. She moves into the city-center with her friends and starts working for Teledutch as an advisor and writer of stories.
The directors of Teledutch are also shown dealing with their quick rise to riches. It was also the time of the rise of House music, so we see the main characters discovering the new music genre and the House parties of Amsterdam.
Provides examples of:
- Bilingual Bonus: Johnny and his family speak Italian. There is also some English spoken. Janna and her boyfriend also make fun of German sex scene, by making up German lines for it.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Marly does this on occasion, once even during disappointing sex. Marly and Janna also hold a little lecture in between about how the knowledge about sex and the female anatomy has improved since the 1980s.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: People are smoking a lot more than now, even right near a newborn baby.
- Drag Queen: It wouldn't be a series about Amsterdam if there were no drag queens in it.
- The '80s: Almost the entire first season is set in this decade. Only at the last few minutes, we see the first day of the nineties.
- '80s Hair: Especially strong with Anouk.
- Girl Posse: Marly and her friends.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Marly and Janna.
- The Missus and the Ex: It's pretty obvious Frank is not over Natasja. What makes it more complicated is that she is now married to his brother.
- Music of the 1980s: Naturally features heavily in a series about the decade, but given extra attention as one of the characters is a deejay wanting to change the Amsterdam music scene by introducing House music.
- New Media Are Evil: State-owned company PTT does not want to be associated with sex line companies, even though they made money of them. They soon relent, though.
