Red Shoe Diaries is an American erotic drama anthology series that aired on Showtime from June 27, 1992 to June 1, 1997, and was distributed by Playboy Entertainment, but as of 2025, Paramount Global Content Distribution overseas. It is a spin-off of the television film of the same name directed by Zalman King. Most episodes were directed by either King or Rafael Eisenman.
The storylines usually have a plot revolving around romantic intrigue and the sexual awakening of a woman who often also narrates. Sensuous love scenes with nudity as well as sultry, moody music are characteristic for most episodes. There is no story arc or characters connecting the different stories other than Jake Winters introducing each episode.
Premise
Jake Winters (David Duchovny) places an ad in the newspaper under "Red Shoes", seeking women to mail in their personal diaries with stories of love, passion, and/or betrayal. He is then shown walking on desolate train tracks with his dog, Stella. He begins reading a letter from his post office box out loud that begins with "Dear Red Shoes..." In the pilot film, Jake lost his fiancée to suicide and discovered she kept a diary detailing an affair she had with a construction worker and shoe salesman who sold her a pair of red high heels. He placed the ad in the newspaper in an effort to make sense of his fiancée's secret life through the stories of women in similar situations. Each episode is devoted to a woman's story Jake receives, and begins and ends with Jake's comments to Stella.
Production
Zalman King conceived of an erotic television series that would air on premium cable, which was then a burgeoning market as it was not beholden to MPAA ratings. With his wife and collaborator Patricia Louisianna Knop, King wrote the script for the television film Red Shoe Diaries, intending it to be the pilot for the anthology series. The film, in conjunction with four episodes, was pitched to Showtime in 1991.
Said King: "I wanted to do an anthology series from a very intimate, woman's point of view." He dismissed the term softcore to categorize his work because of its pornographic connotations, saying, "Eroticism has a real place in my vocabulary because [it] usually needs to move out of a relationship or some sort of tension and that's what I'm very interested in. I usually think of my work as romance." Producer David Saunders said, "We weren't interested in making porn. We wanted to make erotic movies with good stories that looked great, were well-acted, and that concerned women as well as men. Showtime's interests and our interests coincided." Because of the success of X-Files in Germany on RTLII, the same broadcaster bought the rights for this series too and renamed it "Foxy Fantasies", which apparently should make people believe, these are the fantasies of Fox Mulder.
Episodes were mostly filmed in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley. and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. the channel screened several episodes back-to-back on August 30, 2021. Red Shoe Diaries episodes were also broadcast on the Canadian television channel Showcase in August 2010.
Reception
Though the series gained unfavorable attention from critics, it was a major success for Showtime and helped boost the network's viewership to compete with HBO in the 1990s. It was the first softcore program to be touted by a premium cable network and to deliver consistently high ratings. TV critics described the series as "both creator of 'art house' soft porn and savior of the kind of quality programming for which pay cable has also become known", and "innovative for its time...[for staying] true to its basic, lusty principles while adding music-video artiness, jumpy, nervy video cuts and dim mood lighting for a veneer of upscale, almost snooty, erotica. Lifetime with nudity."
Despite the series' foregrounding of a woman's perspective and inclusion of some lesbian story lines, On the same day they also re-released Red Shoe Diaries - The Movie. Season 1 was also made available on Amazon Prime Video. The TV film and series (seasons 1-4) are also available on Tubi, a free streaming service, but not on Paramount+.