What a year it’s been for sex on TV. As we emerge blinking from the annual glut of televisual entertainment, I can’t get over how far we’ve come. Bridgerton, Babylon Berlin, Lady Chatterley… everybody’s at it, with no period in history so tragic that a few cheap thrills can’t be extracted from it. If you’d have told the teenage me that in my lifetime I’d see a comedian with breasts playing a piano with a penis on television, I’d have very much approved; having seen Jordan Gray do so on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live last year, I wish I hadn’t.
Sex on TV has been such a long, strange ride. There were always ‘blue movies’ for those who didn’t mind taking a walk on the seedy side, but most channels were well aware than TV was akin to a guest in the home – and no one wanted to be accused of being the dirty beast who didn’t flush, polluting the pristine hearth.
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