Sheridan Smith is to star in a hard-hitting drama about British porn, aiming to shine a forensic light on issues of power and consent in a controversial but lucrative industry.

Adult Material, a four-part drama written for Channel 4 by the award-winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood, will tell the story of an adult entertainment star Jolene Dollar, played by 36-year-old Smith. It begins filming next year.

“It’s a series I’ve wanted to make for a long time because I think the porn industry is a really interesting environment through which to look at power and how we behave in the workplace,” Kirkwood told the Observer. “It’s not a simple subject and I found the grey areas, such as the fact that it’s one of the few workplaces where women earn more than men and one of the few industries that allows women to juggle work and childcare demands, really fascinating.”

It’s easy to just get angry about porn, but I don’t think it’s very helpful to dismiss another woman’s lived experience Lucy Kirkwood, writer

Jolene is a mother of three who has built a two-decade career in the industry. “She’s not quite Jenna Jameson, but she has a following,” Kirkwood explained, referring to the prolific American star known as “the queen of porn”. Jolene finds her world turned upside down after coming into contact with a younger woman, Amy, an aspiring dancer who turns to porn while recovering from an injury.

“I wanted to look at the way the industry has changed in recent years – there’s a very high turnover of actors working very intensely over a short period now, and that obviously has had a seismic effect,” Kirkwood said. “Jolene considers herself a very maternal person, not only to her own children but also in the way she looks after other women on set, and one of the things that the series considers is how women take care of other women and the culture of complicity and silence that can occur. What it means if you fail to stand up for someone or listen to them when they tell you what has occurred.

“It’s also not a straightforward series. The quality of writing on television these days means that you can’t deal in cardboard cutouts. I wanted people to be sympathetic to these characters, but for questions to also be raised.”

Smith was always the first choice to play Jolene. “I just think she’s extraordinary – I’ve worked with her before [on Kirkwood’s first professional play Tinderbox in 2008] and have the most enormous crush on her. She’s like an old-school movie star,” Kirkwood said. “In the beginning I worried that she was a bit young for the role, but I also found it hard to imagine anyone else having her combination of soul and really precise technique. The character of Jolene is fairly informed by her, so like Sheridan she’s warm and rude and funny and sharp.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lucy Kirkwood has a reputation for tackling difficult subjects. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

Kirkwood, whose plays Chimerica and The Children have won multiple awards, researched the subject by talking to industry performers and directors as well as feminist anti-porn campaigners. The writer has a reputation for tackling difficult subjects, from geopolitics and particle physics to sex trafficking, and stressed that the industry’s darker side wouldn’t be ignored. “It’s a subject about which I have all manner of feelings,” she said. “It’s easy to just get angry about porn and the way in which it affects lives, but I don’t think it’s very helpful to simply dismiss another woman’s lived experience in that way.

“It’s one thing to sit in a bar and argue abstractly about how porn affects us and quite another to talk to a woman whose life this is. I wanted to look at that sympathetically but not softly. I don’t think this is a subject that you can simply take a single strident position on. There’s a lot to be said about how porn is the product of a capitalist mindset and will always have people who, out of necessity or out of choice, are willing to provide it.”

The series is sure to draw comparisons with The Deuce, a period piece by David Simon, the creator of The Wire, about the growth of the porn industry in New York in the 70s, although Kirkwood stressed that she had a slightly different focus in mind.

“I really admire the way in which The Deuce focuses on the economy and the way in which it drives the porn industry and it’s interesting how little has really changed in the most basic sense once you remove the changes in technology,” she said. “But in some senses comparing the British porn industry to the American porn industry is like comparing the British film industry to Hollywood. There’s a sense that it’s less mechanised and more of a cottage industry in Britain and I wanted to reflect that.”

Most of all though she hopes that Adult Material will force audiences to look at the industry in a fresh way. “It’s a story about women navigating their way through a difficult and constantly changing world and I hope that if anyone is dismissive of porn actresses at the beginning then they will reconsider that by the end,” she said. “What I would love is for everyone to feel that the industry has been fairly represented, but also that watching it you have been pushed into areas that you might not always want to go.”