Feminist charity fails to stop Respectable

Eaves has failed in its bid to get Respectable taken off air with the show reaching the end of its six-episode run tomorrow evening. It had argued that the Channel Five sitcom broke Ofcom guidelines by portraying prostitution as "glamorous" and "risk-free".

The London-based feminist charity set up an online petition against the programme, which is set in a surburban brothel, and has collected just under 1,800 names. It condemned Five for showing a sitcom which derived humour from women selling sex in a brothel and labelled it "a gross misrepresentation of the lives of women involved in prostitution. The reality for most women involved in prostitution is coercion, extreme violence, drug dependency, homelessness, criminal records, rapes and beatings - not shoe collections and student loans."

It remains to be seen if Respectable will return for a second series. The show received some terrible reviews and failed to attract Five's average of 1.3 million viewers for programmes in its Wednesday evening slot.