Beware of women telling you they came to see your new born chicks. That’s the lesson game warden Oliver Mellors should heed ahead of the arrival of Her Ladyship in Netflix’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Holding one of the tiny creatures in her hands is all she needs to grab the unsuspecting dude, pull up her skirt and allow him to gratify his carnal desires with the same desperate desperation as a man tucks into his last meal eaten on death row. Those poor chicks. Please, someone, cover their eyes.
It is one of many sex scenes in the latest dramatization of the novel, which caused a scandal when it was published – privately – in Italy in 1928. Explicit sex, four letters, an upper class woman and a working class man and, shock, horror, women enjoying sex – what became of the world!
Lawrence, who died in 1930, wrote three versions of the novel, and this adaptation is a fairly accurate representation of the third. The book was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, tried and found “not guilty” in 1960.
Beware of women telling you they came to see your new born chicks. That’s the lesson game warden Oliver Mellors should heed ahead of the arrival of Her Ladyship in Netflix’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Lady C’s gasping is so violent it’s a wonder Mellors doesn’t stop what he’s doing and calls the paramedics. As someone who is very sensitive to noise, this aspect of TV sex bothers me the most
A love story with a – spoiler alert coming – not-so-happy ending, Netflix’s From Scratch is packed with passionate sex between main characters Amy (Zoe Saldaña) and Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea).
Sex has returned to television in a more graphic way than before, so why is it more ridiculous than ever? Netflix’s From Scratch is pictured above
If only TV and film adaptations of the infamous book were subjected to the same scrutiny. Dull doesn’t begin to cover the latest offering, which, like so much current drama, seeks to shock with explicit sex but bears little resemblance to the plot as most people know it.
Dear God, Lady C’s panting is so heavy it’s a wonder Mellors doesn’t stop what he’s doing and calls the paramedics. Connie’s husband Clifford, injured and impotent from a war injury, had to be stone deaf not to hear the sounds coming from Mellor’s cabin.
As someone who is extremely sensitive to noise – you risk life and limb crushing popcorn within ten feet of me – it’s this aspect of TV sex that bothers me the most.
Take Netflix from scratch. It’s a sublimely moving show if you can make it past the genuinely awful first episode, which appears to be just a bad remake of the sublimely awful Emily in Paris – by the way, returning to Netflix December 21 should you have no life.
Essentially a love story with a – spoiler alert coming – not-so-happy ending, it’s packed with passionate sex between the main characters Amy (Zoe Saldaña) and Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea). She is an art student, he is an Italian chef whose career is cruelly interrupted by an illness. Until then, however, there’s plenty 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, and London — and I’ve never had a dog sniff my ankle, let alone a handsome, fit guy whispering spaghetti recipes in my ear.
And what about these chefs? How do they find time to sleep so much? No wonder my food is always cold when it comes to the table. But I digress.
HBO’s Industry – a show about a group of graduates who compete for jobs at a leading London investment bank – is almost wall-to-wall sex. Is that why stock prices are falling? Where do they all find the time to do business?
There’s girl-on-girl action – unless you’re gay or bi, forget about a successful career in banking – and lots of weird stuff involving bodily fluids, which I won’t go into for fear of spoiling your iffy pleasure find in it
But there is this keyword. Pleasure. With all the graphic details that we see, where is the pleasure in seeing the supposed pleasure for the viewer? It used to be sex sells, but is it still the case?
HBO’s White Lotus has treated us to full frontal male nudity, but it’s very stylized in nature. Where are the manly bellies, the withered scraps of aging flesh, the unwashed armpits?
Well, Amy in Sicily gets attacked by every man she meets, and boy does she let us know. When she and Lino kiss, the drooling noise is so loud you’d think a wildebeest snarler walked into the room – yes, that’s really the catchphrase. Calm down, dear!
Though Amy falls in love with Lino’s food as much as she does with him, her consumption of his meatballs doesn’t come close to the noise she makes when they’re at it. My theory is that he wasn’t sick at all, just couldn’t take their noises anymore.
Sex has returned to television in a more graphic way than before, so why is it more ridiculous than ever?
Scenes of men pleasing women – of which there are many more these days – are probably meant to convey the message that not all men are out to just please themselves, get it all over and take it to the local bar for a finale to create before closing time drink.
But what exactly are they doing that justifies all that moaning and moaning? We never know because it’s all happening under the covers, with people emerging from with their underwear still on.
True, HBO’s White Lotus treated us to some frontal male nudity, but it’s very stylized in nature. Where are the manly bellies, the withered scraps of aging flesh, the unwashed armpits? Maybe I’ve just been unlucky with the men I’ve met – or maybe I should start hanging out more in five-star hotels and restaurant kitchens.
HBO’s Industry – a show about a group of graduates who compete for jobs at a leading London investment bank – is almost wall-to-wall sex. Is that why stock prices are falling? Where do they all find the time to do business?
There’s girl-on-girl action – unless you’re gay or bi, forget about a successful career in banking – and lots of weird stuff involving bodily fluids, which I won’t go into for fear of spoiling your iffy pleasure find in it.
The kinky dispositions of Billion’s character Chuck – played by Paul Giamatti – are hard to forget
By far the most intense sexual tension in recent memory was Netflix’s first series, Bridgerton. Regé-Jean Pages Simon swooned women around the world as his relationship with Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) developed
But there is this keyword. Pleasure. With all the graphic details that we see, where is the pleasure in seeing the supposed pleasure for the viewer? It used to be sex sells, but is it still the case?
Isn’t money the new sex? In industry, it’s not the sex scenes that are remembered, but the insidiousness on the trading floor. In Billions, I don’t remember anyone Bobby (Damian Lewis) slept with, only his ruthless billionaire’s brains — though Chuck’s (Paul Giamatti) perverted tendencies are hard to forget.
Were we really shocked to see Jack (Leo Woodall) escort his “uncle” Quentin (Tom Hollander) on all fours in “White Lotus”? Inserted at the end of the seventh episode of the second series, it felt more like the symbolic gay scene that any drama now needs to have to make it relevant to younger audiences.
Isn’t the best TV sex the unspoken – and above all the invisible? By far the most intense sexual tension in recent memory was Netflix’s first series, Bridgerton. Regé-Jean Pages Simon swooned women around the world as his relationship with Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) developed. The man didn’t even have to take his tie off before you wanted to sleep with him. It was eye sex at its finest.
When the couple finally got around to consummating their union, there was a collective sigh of relief around the world.
Because despite the proliferation of explicit sex that has returned to our screens, everything is pretty much genderless. We know consultants are now an integral part of sets to keep a close eye on what’s going on, but the result is the sanitization of on-screen sex – ironically at a time when it’s more graphic.
So enough with the body parts, the puffing and puffing, the perfectly formed buttocks and toned torsos. If you really want to have sex, show it as it is, not how you would like it to be in your wildest dreams.
And men beware. When a woman says she wants to see your chick, that’s a euphemism.