New generation of TV sex

Cock-a-doodle-doo, cannons, rockets, parts of a woman's body, … Everything in this series opening is screaming sex, sex sex, and sex again. The second does not need an introduction. The series that have begun to impress worldwide audiences in recent years are Masters of Sex and Sex Education . Sex and the City, a bestseller about four friends and their lives and sexual adventures in New York, handed over the baton to the younger series. Finally.

Somehow tired of always the same TV series, I was very excited when I spotted the Masters of Sex, and Sex Education series on Netflix. I started watching the first one a few years ago and concluded that the show was boring before the end of the first season. Truth be told, I have no idea what was going through my head at the time. When I started watching it again this year, I couldn't get away from the screen all night.

Masters of sex

Masters of sex is a series about the two most famous researchers of human sexuality, Dr. William Masters and his secretary and assistant Virginia Johnson. Their research on the human sexual response and the beginning of the sexual revolution is presented in four seasons. I was attracted to it mainly because, despite the 1950s and 1960s events, issues of racial and gender policy, the series remains faithful to the research and focuses primarily on their work. Even the portrayed relationship between Johnson and the Masters doesn't turn the story into a sugary romantic comedy. Just like in their relationship and work, the series also focuses on sex and masturbation. As a consequence, this show is full of hot and steamy scenes.

Michelle Ashford has managed to create a series that teaches and arouses the viewer at the same time. While watching the show, I couldn't help myself not feel a pleasant tingling sensation between my legs. Besides the research, Master of sex is trying to show us the opinions and relationships towards heterosexuality and homosexuality. It was a real struggle to find someone with a penetrating mind at this time, especially about homosexuality, which usually remained hidden behind the motel doors. 

Sex Education

A very similar story is shown in the series Sex Education, which, unlike the Masters of Sex , already offers a more open-minded attitude towards sexuality in the twentieth century. If the first series is all about adults, Sex Education focuses on high school students sexuality and relationships. Although sex appears as a central motif, Laurie Nunn portrays it both through the eyes of adolescents and through the eyes of a sex therapist, the mother of the protagonist, Ottis, an inexperienced nerd who offers help to his peers with sexual problems. In the center are open conversations about sexuality, through which the relationships and emotions of young people are also shown.

Like Masters of sex, Sex Education celebrates sex, and it shows it. Already in the opening scene of the first episode of the first season, we see a girl happily riding her boyfriend, while the lights in the living room, where the boy's mother is quietly watching television, are shaking. Contrary to the scientific approach to sex in Masters of Sex, here, sex is portrayed in a fun and humorous way. As Lucy Mangan says:

"A horny teenage comedy and at the same time much more than just that."

The common feature of both series and, at the same time, their advantage, is sex. But who wouldn't watch a series about sex that deals with sexual problems that just about everyone has experienced? Awkward questions, blushing while talking about masturbation, diseases, relationships. With all of these stories, the series touches us and caresses our wild, sexual side. Nerds, scientists, therapists, popular girls, soccer players, gays, lesbians, black people, white people, bullies - there is a spark in each of them, a tingling feeling between their legs, which both series intensely encourage and pave a new path for sexuality on TV screens. Sex and the city is history, Masters of sex the present, and Sex Education the future. 

Sources:

• Sex Education review – a horny teen comedy … and so much more: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/11/sex-education-review-netflix-asa-butterfield-gillian-anderson
• ‘Masters of Sex’ Is Hardly Clinical: https://www.popmatters.com/masters-of-sex-showtime-2599801510.html

Cover image: elastictv