Not every TV show is created equal — these supposedly "sexy" series left us cold, despite their copious amounts of onscreen nudity and actors with incredibly symmetrical looks. However, the 10 titles below are just the kind of thirst-inducing programs that you'll want to watch alone. (Seriously, this is not the kind of stuff you want to watch with your parents.)
From naughty network shows like ABC's Scandal to steamy streaming series like Hulu's Normal People, these are the sexiest TV shows that actually deliver on being sexy.
10 sexy TV shows that actually bring the heat
Sense8
The dearly departed sci-fi drama was cancelled by Netflix in 2017 after its second season, but before it ended, it served up plenty of sexy moments in its 24 episodes. The series follows eight very photogenic strangers from around the globe — portrayed by Aml Ameen, Bae Doona, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Ángel Silvestre and Brian J. Smith — who realized they are "sensates," beings that are linked mentally and emotionally but also, yes, very much physically, too. That connection often manifests itself onscreen as explicit orgy scenes, all tangled limbs and fluid sexuality.
Sex/Life
With a come-hither title like Sex/Life, this Netflix series better live up to its name, no? Based on BB Easton's 2016 novel 44 Chapters About 4 Men, the erotic melodrama follows Billie Connelly (Sarah Shahi), a suburban housewife and mother of two whose life — in the bedroom and beyond — gets shaken up when her ex-boyfriend Brad Simon (Adam Demos) makes a reappearance.
Much was made of Demos' shower-set full-frontal scene in season 1, but what actually gives the show its heat is the real-deal chemistry between Shahi and Demos, who have been dating since meeting on set back in 2020.
Outlander
The love scenes on Outlander —the long-running historical drama on Starz, which is going into its seventh season on Friday, June 16 — stand out from the porny pack thanks to their sex positivity and female gaze. Taking a page from the Diana Gabaldon book series of the same name, many of the intimate acts are from the perspective of our heroine Claire Randall (Caitríona Balfe), a World War II nurse who time-travels back to the 18th century and finds herself a hunky Highland warrior named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan).
"She was the one asking for it, she was the one directing him what to do," Balfe told Vulture. "We're so used to seeing women being objectified, as objects of desire of men, but it's rare when you see a woman owning her sexuality, directing it, orchestrating the sequence of events."
Queer as Folk
It was the lick seen around the world. The opening episode of Queer as Folk, both the early-2000s Showtime serial and the British series it was based on, set a very racy precedent for what was to come. Intimately following the lives of five gay men (played by Gale Harold, Randy Harrison, Hal Sparks, Peter Paige and Scott Lowell) and two lesbian women (Thea Gill and Michelle Clunie) in Pittsburgh, Pa., the LGBTQ show was not only groundbreaking as the first to depict a sex scene between two men on American television but also in the brazenness with which it exhibited queer sexuality, from casual hook-ups and cruising to club culture.
Interview With the Vampire
The AMC series Interview With the Vampire, based on Anne Rice's 1976 novel of the same name, makes explicit what that Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise title from the '90s only hinted at. Yes, that means rather than merely flirting with man-on-man action, viewers get it full-on in sultry scenes between Jacob Anderson's Creole vamp, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and the bloodsucker who turned him, the charismatic Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). Their supernatural lust is so spectacular that in one scene it literally propels them in the air, their naked bodies entwined up above. "It just goes to show the intensity of their connection. That was translated really beautifully," Reid told Decider.
True Blood
Yes, more vampires. What can we say? Those undead suckers are damn seductive. Like Interview With the Vampire, True Blood — the fantasy-horror drama that ran for seven seasons on HBO — amps up the libidos of the Louisianans onscreen and everybody watching at home, too. NFSW nudity abounds from the likes of Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin (whose palpable sexual tension transcended the show; the couple has been married since 2010), as well as smokeshows including Alexander Skarsgård, Evan Rachel Wood and Joe Manganiello, who do some major getting-down down in Bon Temps.
The Affair
They're morally repugnant, sure, but extramarital dalliances do tend to make for some hot TV. The Affair — the five-season Showtime drama starring Ruth Wilson as Alison Bailey, a married diner waitress who embarks on an illicit relationship with struggling novelist Noah Solloway (Dominic West), himself wedded and with kids — is titillating proof. Given all of that collateral damage at stake (Alison has Joshua Jackson waiting for her at home; Noah, Maura Tierney), the show's many sex scenes have to sell that such extracurricular activity is worth it for the characters. It does that and more.
Normal People
"You know when you have 'it'," Normal People star Paul Mescal told The Telegraph of the considerable chemistry he shared with his onscreen lover, Daisy Edgar-Jones, in the BBC3/Hulu romantic drama, based on the book of the same name by Sally Rooney. And the pair had "it" in spades: Connell Waldron's footballer short-shorts and gold chain turned Mescal into the thinking woman's sex symbol, and his frequent erotic encounters with Edgar-Jones's character, Marianne Sheridan, were so lusty and languorous that Normal People was the BBC's most-streamed series of 2020, being viewed more than 62 million times. That's a lot of normal people getting all riled up.
Gossip Girl
High-school hormones are already potent stuff, but throw in a lot of money and power on top of it and you have the salacious energy that stoked this CW favorite from 2007 to 2012. The teen drama — which followed a group of very privileged adolescents on New York's Upper East Side, portrayed by Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Ed Westick, Chace Crawford, among others —was known as "every parent's nightmare" during its five-season run, and for good reason: these kids (who were very much played by adults, mind you) were getting up to some pretty saucy antics. And if you thought what made it onscreen was raunchy, the showrunners reportedly had to cut out some sex scenes because they were literally to hot for network TV.
Scandal
Every now and then on social media, Scandal co-stars Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn are brought back up as the gold standard for co-star chemistry. And if you tuned in even once to the Shonda Rhimes political drama during its six-season run on ABC, you know why. Their forbidden love is a high-stakes one —with Washington playing Olivia Pope, a powerful crisis manager, and Goldwyn as Fitzgerald "Fitz" Grant III, the very married President of the United States — which makes every scene they share together charged with sensual intensity, whether they're up against a tree or pulled into an electronics closet or, yes, mixing business with pleasure in the Oval Office of the White House.
