The Femail Face-off: As social distancing makes filming them almost impossible... should we kill off erotic TV scenes?

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Rowan Pelling thinks nothing should get in the way of a good sex scene, not even a pandemic

NO

By Rowan Pelling

Save the Great British sex scene! As TV crews return to work after months of lockdown, a debate has started about whether dramatised scenes of physical intimacy are viable in the age of Covid-19.

How on earth do you have two characters meet and make love when they are supposed to only see people in their ‘social bubble’?

To which my answer is: are you mad? Nothing stops sex. Not wars, famines or pandemics. Otherwise the human race would have died out years ago.

As in real life, so in drama. During the long months of social distancing, sex on the box lifted the nation’s spirits. Why else was the BBC’s erotic Normal People such a hit?

Steamy scenes aren’t just about the vicarious pleasure of watching two attractive people. The way in which an individual approaches intimacy tells you screeds about their personality. Just think of the coldly seductive, bisexual Villanelle in Killing Eve, who is as ruthless in bed as she is when working as an assassin. Conversely, a buttoned-up character such as Keeley Hawes’s Home Secretary in Bodyguard can show an unexpectedly passionate side in the confines of a hotel room.

Sex is vital to the pace of a drama. Where is the pleasure in an intense build-up of erotic tension if you’re then cheated of the cathartic moment when two characters come together at long last?

Try imagining The Night Manager without Tom Hiddleston’s Jonathan finally, electrifyingly, making love to Elizabeth Debicki’s Jed. If you think the series would have benefited from the erasure of Hiddleston’s taut buttocks, you’re not living in the same viewing universe as most of us.

Apart from anything else, ditching hot clinches would erase all the recent progress that’s been made to ensure gender parity in sex scenes.

One reason Normal People was so admired was the effort made to show women’s sexuality on equal terms to men’s. The use of an ‘intimacy coach’ was also cited as a reason why the scenes were so authentic. Similar attention to equality of pleasure was evident in Netflix’s Sex Education, where Otis is shown striving to work out the mysteries of female anatomy.

So let’s not lose the passion. Directors can film the non-sex scenes first, then shoot the steamy scenarios in a ‘bubble of intimacy’ at the end. If actors have to quarantine afterwards, then it’s a worthwhile production cost, as the record-busting ratings for Normal People show.

More sex please, we’re British!

Lisa Hilton believes that we've all seen enough sex for now and that people should use their imaginations 

YES 

By Lisa Hilton

Recently, I’ve been working on the script for a new TV series, a glamorous eight-part thriller.

At the end of a lengthy meeting with the producers, we had got the story into shape but then someone pointed out what was missing. Had we got enough sex scenes?

We had protagonists flirting and kissing in a variety of international locations but only one (discreet) sex scene. We discussed whether we should make it a bit more steamy and I was surprised to find myself arguing against.

You might expect me to support frank portrayals of sex. Several years ago, I wrote a novel — Maestra, an erotic thriller about a woman who refuses to apologise for her desires — which my publishers described as ‘shocking’ because of the graphic sex.

I don’t understand such prudishness. Like it or not (and personally I don’t), we live in a world where hardcore porn can be viewed online in a couple of taps, so there is little that will truly shock your readers or TV audience.

Yet it feels to me as though something has shifted; as if we’re all just a bit sh****d out? Perhaps it’s because we have all escaped into our screens more than ever during the gruelling months of lockdown.

How many more shots of a male actor’s bouncing buttocks do we need to see? So many shows seem to feel obliged to include lengthy sex scenes. But despite the actors’ gymnastic efforts, they look lazy.

Admittedly, the sex in the BBC’s Normal People was a merciful break from the stilted, sententious dialogue but it also served to pad out a frankly flimsy storyline. No wonder TV producers’ suggestion that they replace real actors with mannequins, filmed ‘from a great distance’ to make ‘Covid-secure’ sex scenes, has met with calls for them not to bother. Others will use CGI so two actors cavort on their own, then get smushed together by digital magic.

What’s the point? Audiences are more sophisticated than ever about the mechanics of film-making. Suspending our disbelief will be even more difficult if we know it’s all faked.

And that’s before one factors in the post-pandemic ‘ick’ factor; who is going to feel comfortable watching a passionate orgy in these socially distanced days? This isn’t about whether showing sex is right or wrong, it’s more that right now, bonking doesn’t feel particularly relevant.

In the end, incidentally, we agreed to leave the script as it was. We’ve seen too much action of late; it’s time for a little imagination.