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Guilty Pleasures
Sunday July 8 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network
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Guilty Pleasures
Watch the film online. Please note: this film is only available for 30 days after the last broadcast date.
68:15 min 
A light-hearted look at the world of romance novels and the impact they have on an amazing cast of characters who read them, write them, and work for them. From a demure Japanese housewife who takes up ballroom dancing and dreams of being swept off her feet by a David Beckham look-alike, to a deboniar Indian 'princess' who's grown tired of playing victim to her debonair husband who left her for a younger woman, to the sexy romance novel cover model who can get any woman he wants but is holding out for his 'soul-mate', Guilty Pleasures examines the parallels between Harlequin romance novels and the real lives of some of the people who buy them somewhere in the world every 4 seconds. Glamorous author Gill Sanderson churns out 5 Mills & Boon titles a year to her devoted readers. We discover that Gill is in fact Roger, a pensioner writing from a small caravan in England's Lake district.
The formula is simple: man falls for woman, makes it through a variety of obstacles and manages to win her heart. Invariably on the cover: muscle man and luscious lady in a passionate embrace. What is the secret of these paperbacks, replete with barely believable love stories?
Guilty Pleasures lightheartedly confronts us with the very human need to escape to a world that's somehow better than our own. This all sounds much more romantic than the writer of many Harlequins would put it. In her words, "Marriage is the price men pay for sex and sex is the price women pay for marriage."
Directed by Julie Moggan for Bungalow Town Pictures.
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