The excellent Rivals, an adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster, in which 1980s rich people enthusiastically bonk (English for having sex), is back on Disney+ this week. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to write a short history of sexy telly.
The Late Late Show
“There was no sex in Ireland before television,” said Oliver J Flanagan, a man who, like many of his fellow politicians in that era, reproduced by binary fission. He was, specifically, referring to The Late Late Show.
You see, in the 1960s the population was shrinking so much that they put Gay Byrne, the sexiest man in Ireland, on the telly to try to get people in the mood. He told them about things like birth control and Protestants and the United States. Bishops and politicians were appalled. And also quite turned on.
The Muppet Show
I think the heterosexuals reading this can agree that the Kermit the Frog–Miss Piggy dynamic is at the core of all straight relationships. The fiery will-they-won’t-they tension between the amphibious theatre impresario and the porcine diva makes other TV romances – Ross and Rachel, Smurfette and Gargamel, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – look insipid. We all want what the pig and the frog have, really. Even if what they have ends up being grotesque, chattering pig-frog hybrids (see: my nephews).
Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Photograph: Dave M Benett/Getty Pepé Le Pew
A French skunk on the hunt for love with a terrified cat is unusual subject matter for children. But, as people keep reminding us, it was a different time.
In retrospect, the aromatic Gallic sex pest probably should have been on a register. I assume he’s in jail now.
It’s just a cartoon, you say? Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me watch this disturbing children’s documentary about France in peace.
Benny Hill
The comedy stylings of the “comic” Benny Hill chasing/being chased by young women could also easily be re-soundtracked with an ominous minor synth chord. Then it would cease to be the story of a hapless local character and instantly become a terrifying tale of a serial predator rampaging around postwar Britain. I can picture the gritty remake now.
The Benny Hill Show. Photograph: Ron McLaren/TV Times via Getty Baywatch
“Why is my favourite work of audiovisual culture on this list?” says you, an intellectual who reads the London Review of Books.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Freyne. Baywatch is a public-service programme about the administration of life-saving services by aquatic technocrats. Yes, the characters wear striking costumes, but what of it? They’re just uniforms like any others. They might as well be firemen or doctors or beefeaters or medieval knights.
“Yes, they are all technically ‘fit’, but that’s a necessary quality in rescue personnel. As for the slow-motion-running sequences, these are simply an educational choice so that viewers can see the correct way to run on a beach while carrying an inflatable. Now leave me be, children, and close the blinds on the way out. I wish to be alone with Baywatch so that I can have deep thoughts about how to administer emergency healthcare in a seaside setting.”
Baywatch: Kelly Rohrbach, Alexandra Daddario, Ilfenesh Hadera, Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron and Jon Bass in the film of the series. Photograph: Frank Masi/Paramount Late night on Channel 4 in the 1980s
It’s 11pm on a Friday. Check. It’s 1989. Check. Attractive people on screen are smoking cigarettes and speaking French. Check. Your parents are watching The Late Late Show in the other room. Check. The remote is in your hand, ready for a swift emergency change of station. Check. Well, then, it looks as if it’s time to appreciate some art-house cinema!
’Allo ’Allo!
As a fan of French cinema you’ll also be aware of the BBC’s erotically-charged wartime tale about a simple restaurateur, René Artois (played by the striking Gorden Kaye) trying to juggle many lovers while fighting the Nazis. It’s where my understanding of the second World War came from before Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List. This is probably my fourth or fifth reference to ’Allo ’Allo! in my column this year. ’Allo is my safe word.
HBO in the 2000s
In the American context, TV creators who moved from one of the big networks to cable, where none of the censorious attitudes of the former applied, found themselves going mad with power in the noughties. Characters cursed constantly. “**** you, you *********er. I want to **** you in the ****** with my ****,” they said. And for no good reason, naked ladies were paraded around the screen.
To make this plausible, characters were constantly having meetings in brothels and strip clubs, even when they were city planners or nuns. HBO in the noughties was aimed squarely at the gaze of 14-year-old boys. Eventually, someone realised that 14-year-old boys couldn’t afford cable, and they pulled back on the gratuitous female nudity.
More recently, we’ve been getting more-equal-opportunity pervery on TV with shows like Sex/Life and Heated Rivalry and Rivals, in which we get to see ****s and ****s as well as ***s and ****s. Oh, what a time to be alive!
Hunk content: Love Island, Too Hot to Handle, Temptation Island, Love Is Blind, Ex on the Beach
The time is late, my friends, the world is on fire and I have begun to tire of hunks. In the past, the Homo hunkus was a rarity on TV, present only around the moustache of Magnum and beneath the big cowboy hat of JR Ewing. For most of my life we were, as a culture, wrangling with something of a hunk drought.
Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen a raft of shows in which a bevy of hunks and hunkettes have emerged wearing the traditional dress uniforms of the Baywatch guard. (We thank you for your service, etc.) But are there perhaps too many hunks now? Should we buy them all shirts and be done with it? I am of course joking. If you are tired of hunks, you are tired of life.
Normal People
Look, there’s nothing normal about these sullen sex freaks, but Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones’ characters got us through lockdown. Furthermore, I’ve decided that I’m the voice of my generation, so Sally Rooney, the voice of hers, is one of the few people I can relate to.
Normal People: Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Photograph: Enda Bowe/Element/BBC Bridgerton
Shonda Rhimes’ historical humpfest was born when an out-of-breath researcher ran into a production meeting clasping leather-bound books, rolls of papyrus and stone tablets. “People had sex in the past!” she cried. “There was olden-days sex! Bygone bonking! Throwback thrusting!! Retro riding!!! I HAVE PROOF!” And suddenly the lush costumery of antiquity was redesigned so halcyon hunks could bust out of their britches on cue.
Room to Improve
I have said before that, while The Late Late Show brought sex to Ireland, you could only see your neighbours doing it after Dermot Bannon installed big windows in everyone’s houses. Even without this architectural voyeurism, a programme all about refurbishing a house that includes floor-plans and spreadsheets and credit-union loans and environmental grants and unfiltered access to strangers’ en suites is pure erotica for the Irish mind.
This is probably because of the Famine (or maybe the “hunk drought”). Whatever the origins of our raging real-estate lust, I think we can agree that when watching Room to Improve, we all come in on budget. Absolute filth.