No, no, NO! JACI STEPHEN plunges into the oceans of highly graphic sex that is now on TV – and reveals directors’ overly-explicit errors that make a turn-on into a TURN-OFF

• WARNING: SPOILERS: Sex has returned to TV in more graphic ways than before…  so why is it more laughable than ever?
• From Netflix’s adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover to HBO’s White Lotus, there is no shortage of shocking nudity and over-the-top love-making on TV
• But for all the graphic detail we see, where’s the pleasure for the viewer in watching this alleged pleasure? 
• Sex used to sell but is that still the case? 

Beware women who tell you they’ve come to see your newborn chicks. That’s the lesson gamekeeper Oliver Mellors should have heeded before the arrival of Her Ladyship in Netflix’s adaptation of D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Holding one of the tiny creatures in her hands is all the impetus she needs to grab the unsuspecting guy, hoist her skirt up, and allow him to satisfy his carnal desires with the same frantic desperation as a man consuming his last meal on Death Row. Those poor chicks. Please, someone, cover their eyes.

It’s one of many sex scenes in the latest dramatization of the novel that caused a scandal when it was published – privately – in Italy in 1928. Explicit sex, four-letter words, an upper-class woman and a working-class man and, shock, horror, women enjoying sex. What was the world coming to?!

Lawrence, who died in 1930, wrote three versions of the novel, and this adaptation is a fairly accurate portrayal of the third. Prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, the book was put on trial and found ‘not guilty’ in 1960.

Beware women who tell you they’ve come to see your newborn chicks. That’s the lesson gamekeeper Oliver Mellors should have heeded before the arrival of Her Ladyship in Netflix’s adaptation of D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover 

Lady C’s panting is so heavy, it’s a wonder Mellors doesn’t stop what he is doing and call for the paramedics. As someone who is super-sensitive to noise, it’s this aspect of TV sex that bothers me the most

If only TV and movie adaptations of the infamous book were subject to the same scrutiny. Dull doesn’t begin to cover the latest offering which, like so many recent dramas, sets out to shock with explicit sex but bears little resemblance to the act as most people know it.

Dear lord, Lady C’s panting is so heavy; it’s a wonder Mellors doesn’t stop what he is doing and call for the paramedics. Connie’s husband Clifford, injured and impotent from a war injury, would have to be stone deaf not to hear the sounds emanating from Mellors’ hut.

As someone who is super-sensitive to noise – you risk life and limb if you crunch popcorn within ten feet of me – it’s this aspect of TV sex that bothers me the most. 

Take Netflix’s From Scratch. It’s a sublimely moving show if you can make it past the truly dreadful first episode that seems just a bad remake of the sublimely dreadful Emily in Paris – returning to Netflix on December 21, by the way, should you not have a life.

Netflix’s From Scratch, a love story with a – spoiler alert coming up – not so happy ending, is packed with passionate sex between the main characters, Amy (Zoe Saldaña) and Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea)

Sex has returned to TV in more graphic ways than before, so why is it more laughable than ever? Netflix’s From Scratch is pictured above

Essentially a love story with a – spoiler alert coming up – not-so-happy ending, it’s packed with passionate sex between the main characters, Amy (Zoe Saldaña) and Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea). She’s an art student; he’s an Italian chef whose career is cruelly cut short because of illness. Until that point, though, there’s a lot of sex – and I mean a lot.

How do these American arrivals in Europe manage to get so much action? I’ve lived in Paris, two different parts of Spain, London – and I’ve never had so much as a dog sniff my ankle, let alone a handsome, fit guy whispering spaghetti recipes in my ear.

And what is it with these chefs? How do they find time to sleep around so much? Small wonder my food is always cold by the time it gets to the table. But I digress. 

HBO’s Industry – a show about a group of graduates competing for jobs at a top London investment bank – is almost wall to wall sex. Is this why share prices are dropping? Where do they all find the time to do deals?

There’s girl-on-girl action – if you’re not a lesbian or bi, you can forget a successful career in banking – and lots of strange stuff involving bodily fluids that I won’t go into, for fear of spoiling whatever dubious pleasure you might find in that

But there’s that keyword. Pleasure. For all the graphic detail we see, where’s the pleasure, in watching alleged pleasure, for the viewer? It used to be the case that sex sells, but is that still the case?

HBO’s White Lotus has treated us to some full-frontal male nudity , but it’s of a very stylized nature. Where are the male paunches, the scraggy bits of ageing flesh, the unwashed armpits?

So, Amy in Sicily is pounced upon by every man she meets, and boy, does she let us know it. When she and Lino kiss, the sound of slobbering is so loud, you’d be forgiven for thinking a confusion of wildebeest had entered the room – yes, that really is the collective noun. Tone it down, love! 

Despite Amy falling in love with Lino’s food as much as she does with him, her devouring of his meatballs doesn’t come close to equaling the racket she makes when they’re at it. My theory is that he wasn’t sick at all but just couldn’t take the sound of her anymore.

Sex has returned to TV in more graphic ways than before, so why is it more laughable than ever? 

Scenes of men pleasuring women – of which there are many more these days – are presumably meant to convey the message that not all men are out to satisfy just themselves, get it all over with, and make it down to the local bar for a final drink before closing time.

But what, exactly, do they do that warrants all that moaning and groaning? We never get to find out, because it all takes place under bedclothes from which people emerge with their underwear still on. 

True, HBO’s White Lotus has treated us to some full-frontal male nudity, but it’s of a very stylized nature. Where are the male paunches, the scraggy bits of ageing flesh, the unwashed armpits? Maybe I’ve just been unlucky with the men I’ve met – or maybe I need to start hanging out more in Five Star hotels and restaurant kitchens.

HBO’s Industry – a show about a group of graduates competing for jobs at a top London investment bank – is almost wall-to-wall sex. Is this why share prices are dropping? Where do they all find the time to do deals? 

There’s girl-on-girl action (if you’re not a lesbian or bi, you can forget a successful career in banking) and lots of strange stuff involving bodily fluids that I won’t go into, for fear of spoiling whatever dubious pleasure you might find in that.

The kinky dispositions of Billions character Chuck – played by Paul Giamatti – are hard to forget 

By far the most intense sexual tension in recent times was in series one of Netflix’s Bridgerton. Regé-Jean Page’s Simon had women the world over swooning as his relationship with Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) developed

But there’s that keyword. Pleasure. For all the graphic detail we see, where’s the pleasure, in watching alleged pleasure, for the viewer? It used to be the case that sex sells, but is that still the case?

Isn’t money the new sex? In Industry, it is not the sex scenes that one remembers, but the backstabbing on the trading floor. In Billions, I don’t remember anyone Bobby (Damian Lewis) slept with, only his ruthless billionaire’s brain – although the kinky predispositions of Chuck (Paul Giamatti) are hard to forget.

In White Lotus, were we really shocked to see Jack (Leo Woodall) giving his ‘uncle’ Quentin (Tom Hollander) on all fours a good seeing to? Thrown in at the end of episode seven of the second series, it felt more like the token gay scene that every drama must now have, in order to make it relevant to a younger audience.

Isn’t the best TV sex the unspoken – and, more to the point, the unseen? By far the most intense sexual tension in recent times was in series one of Netflix’s Bridgerton. Regé-Jean Page’s Simon had women the world over swooning as his relationship with Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) developed. The man didn’t even have to take so much as his tie off before you wanted to sleep with him. It was eye sex at its glorious best.

When the pair finally got around to consummating their union, there was a collective sigh of relief the world over.

For despite the proliferation of explicit sex that has returned to our screens, it’s all rather sexless. We know that advisors are now a permanent feature on sets to keep a watchful eye over proceedings, but the result is the sanitization of onscreen sex – ironically, at a time when it is more graphic.

So please, enough with the body parts, the huffing and puffing, the perfectly formed buttocks and tight torsos. If you really want to do sex, show it as it is, not how you want it to be in your wildest dreams.

And men, watch out. When a woman says she wants to see your chick, it’s a euphemism.

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