20 Sexiest TV Shows, Ranked

Maybe this classic sitcom doesn’t spring to mind when you think “sexiest shows,” but Blanche Devereaux would like a word. One of the most deliriously libidinous characters in small-screen history, Blanche (Rue McClanahan, genius) didn’t just embody the fact that female desire, and desirability, doesn’t fade at 40 (or 50); she was also one of the great erotic fabulists, her reminiscences of past exploits and present yearnings vivid enough to get anyone hot and bothered (though mostly the latter in the case of Bea Arthur’s fabulous grump, Dorothy). Blanche’s lustful monologues — delivered in a Southern drawl and peppered with phrases like “perky bosoms,” “unbridled passion,” “uncontrollable ecstasy” and, um, “sweating and screaming and clawing like a trapped panther” — mirrored the rhythms of sex itself, ebbing, flowing and racing toward a breathless climax. Long before Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones normalized a woman’s right to get her freak on however, and however often, she pleased at any age, Blanche was tossing off such indelible lines as, “Like I’m the only person who ever mixed a margarita in a sailor’s mouth!”

Jane Austen’s novel is an opposites-attract rom-com, a Regency comedy of manners, a treatise on class. The 1995 miniseries, however, morphs it into something else entirely: pornography for nerdy chicks. A superlative adaptation unto itself, this Pride and Prejudice is almost reductively known for one scene only. The problem? It doesn’t exist. On a hot summer’s day, irascible landowner Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth) comes upon a pond, and dives in still wearing his white shirt and trousers. Later, he walks back to his estate without his typical fineries, along the way encountering Lizzy Bennet (Jennifer Ehle), a comely neighbor with whom he’s had tense interactions. Caught in a vulnerable state and wet from the swim, he’s uncomfortably aware that Ms. Bennet is feasting on him with her eyes as they awkwardly make small talk. But in the cultural memory, the scene is different: Darcy emerging glistening from a lake, his shirt translucent as he strides toward the camera shaking water out of his hair. Nope, that doesn’t happen. A generation of viewers were just so turned on by watching a woman claim her power over her social superior that they literalized the sensual nature of the dynamic, reimagining it with a quasi-bodice ripper ethos. That’s how sexy Firth is here: He cringes under the weight of witnessing himself be objectified.

The ’90s and early 2000s were the era of the network TV “lesbian kiss episode.” A one-time gimmick intended to boost ratings during sweeps, it often featured a rather chaste lip smooch between a straight female protagonist and a vaguely queer guest star. Only a handful of years after the heyday of this trope, Showtime debuted The L Word, TV’s first ensemble drama about lesbian and bisexual female characters. And compared to Winona Ryder awkwardly planting her face on Jennifer Aniston’s on Friends, it was practically soft-core pornography. Ilene Chaiken’s lusty, loony series was transgressive not only for showcasing the warts-and-all dynamics of queer women living in Los Angeles, but for simply centering what a lot of women wanted to see in sex scenes. Indeed, The L Word’s sex is so plentiful, notorious and downright intriguing, it has inspired exhaustive internet rankings devoted to individual scenes. For more romantically inclined viewers, the committed intimacy between longtime partners Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Holloman) will stir your passions. But for anyone with a pulse, the many, many random sexual affairs of iconically swaggering Shane (Katherine Moennig) may ignite something you didn’t know you had in you.

The acting was all over the place, the storylines hit-or-miss, and it took the Darren Star/Aaron Spelling primetime soap — an older, sleazier companion piece to Beverly Hills, 90210 — a season to find its shameless groove. But once it did, this saga about the horny, histrionic, unreasonably attractive occupants of an L.A. apartment complex made for some seriously steamy broadcast programming. Among other things, the series was blessed with not one but two unhinged redhead knockouts (Laura Leighton’s Sydney and Marcia Cross’ iconic nutjob Kimberly) competing for irresistible cad Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro); one of the most beautiful square jawlines — and male torsos — to ever grace the small screen (thank you, Grant Show/Jake); and Heather Locklear flouncing around in all her bleach-blond, miniskirt-sporting glory as resident HBIC Amanda Woodward. The hookups happened in almost every conceivable configuration and context, with highlights including Amanda and Jake making enthusiastic use of her office desk and Michael’s unorthodox tactics in securing Sydney’s signature on divorce papers. And while the formula was ironclad — hot-and-heavy kissing, occasionally with clothes-ripping, accompanied by goofily dramatic electric guitar riffs and fades to commercial or credits — each climactic embrace somehow felt naughty and new.

Yearning is at the heart of the sexiest romances, and nowhere is that truer than in Shonda Rhimes’ political soap about the torrid affair between the president of the United States and the head of his crisis management team. Long before Simon burned for Daphne (Bridgerton) or Kate became the object of all of Anthony’s desires (Bridgerton again), Fitz (Tony Goldwyn) existed for Olivia (Kerry Washington). He confessed his feelings in the White House Rose Garden in season two (“I wait for you, I watch for you” is a canonical monologue), sparking five seasons of intense, carnally charged drama. Politics is merely a backdrop for Fitz and Olivia’s crazy-making on-and-off-again relationship, which tested loyalties, crossed boundaries and incited many a lustful soliloquy. But let’s be honest: What kept audiences rooting for the toxic couple was the electric chemistry between Goldwyn and Washington. The pair’s passionate line deliveries and palpable longing — their eye contact became its own kind of language — heightened the stakes of this deliciously unchaste relationship. Rarely has forbidden love been so irresistible. 

There’s a generation of women now in their 30s and 40s who can tell you the precise moment of their sexual awakening: a telltale unzipping sound heard in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season six, episode nine (“Smashed”). Sarah Michelle Gellar’s world-saving Buffy is embroiled in a knock-down, drag-out brawl with James Marsters’ bleached vampire Spike, and as the ceilings and floors of an abandoned house collapse around them, the violence unleashes Buffy’s subversive desire for her longtime enemy. They screw passionately against a crumbling wall, as Buffy finally gets the good sex she deserves following a few failed romances, including accidentally turning her first love evil after offering her virginity to him. (There are few ways doing it for the first time can go worse than that.) Joss Whedon’s magnum opus about how high school is literally hell never shies away from drawing a line between carnage and eroticism. But Buffy highlights just as many sweet nothings as it does sour dealings, such as the groundbreaking queer love story between dorky Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and shy Tara (Amber Benson). In fact, for Buffy’s musical episode, Whedon devotes a whole song to their sapphic sensuality.

There is absolutely nothing romantic about this drama, set largely within the fluorescent-lit halls of a London investment bank. To the contrary: It’s ice-cold cynicism all the way down, populated by characters willing to stab one another in the back for one more red cent. But sexy? Oh, yes. Without much going on in their lives besides the job, these hard-charging 20-somethings aren’t above bringing their carnal impulses to work with them, like Gus (David Jonsson) offering to wear an office hookup’s spunk under his shirt and tie, or Robert (Harry Lawtey) getting a backseat hand job from a frisky client (Sarah Parish). And since their taste for thrill-seeking doesn’t stop at the desk, they’re into exploring anything and everything — Yasmin (Marisa Abela), in particular, has tapped into her inner domme with Robert and indulged in golden showers with her boyfriend/client (Kit Harington). That all this activity is taking place against a corporate culture rife with bullying and sexual harassment makes it darker, but also, ultimately, smarter and naughtier: This is a show that understands the way sex, power and money play off one another, to intoxicating effect. 

For yet another grim screen story about Sad Irish Kids ™, Normal People frankly has no business also being this skin-tinglingly erotic. Based on Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel of love and loss between two burgeoning adults, the 12-episode drama launched the careers of movie stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, and with good reason: The charge between the actors is plainly magnetic. It’s hard enough for some films to sustain a romance across two hours; Normal People does it across six, relaying the complex adolescent attraction between wealthy outcast Marianne (Edgar-Jones) and poor, popular Connell (Mescal) as they grow from teenagers in a secret situationship to grown-ups navigating difficult love. The series is shot with stunningly cinematic precision, especially its memorably realistic sex scenes, which don’t attempt to gloss over the discomforts of first-time intimacy. Edgar-Jones and Mescal’s alchemical magic is enough to supersede the embarrassment of these moments and transform the inherent awkwardness into raw ache.

Have you ever had sex so good it literally made you float off the ground? Because Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) have. Midway through the premiere, what begins as a luscious threesome takes a turn for the magical and macabre as Lestat sinks his teeth into Louis, so out of his mind with ecstasy that the rules of gravity melt away. And that’s just the start of the romance between this melodramatic duo, baptized in blood and fire. These monsters don’t do anything by half measures, and neither does their saga. The pair’s connection becomes so powerful it spans centuries and continents, so toxic it leaves dozens of bodies in its wake and so irresistible that neither seems able to quit it no matter what other lovers, villains and ill-fated eternal children fate throws in their path. While this basic cable gem may not be the most explicit title on our list, it’s second to none in its sense of full-throated passion. From the melodious purple prose of the dialogue to the sumptuous aesthetic to the scorching-hot chemistry between its leads, everything about Rolin Jones’ Anne Rice adaptation feels replete with sensuality and humid with desire. 

The Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski’s globe-trotting sci-fi was all about the human capacity for connection. And what better way for a series to show us humans connecting than through many, many, many spicy sex scenes? While the primary link between its eight devastatingly attractive leads was a psychic one, allowing them to share thoughts, emotions or physical sensations across continents, that intimacy often manifested onscreen as an explicit sensuality, the characters coming together (pun very much intended) in heaps of damp skin and tangled limbs. Whatever your orientation, this show had something to rev your engine. Sometimes the flames burned between star-crossed pairings within the circle, like Chicago cop Will (Brian J. Smith) and Icelandic DJ Riley (Tuppence Middleton) or German safecracker Wolfgang (Max Riemelt) and Indian pharmacist Kala (Tina Desai). Sometimes they extended to outside lovers, as with San Fran hacker Nomi (Jamie Clayton) and her girlfriend (Freema Agyeman), or Spanish actor Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre), his boyfriend (Alfonso Herrera) and his beard (Erendira Ibarra). But steamiest of all were those intragroup orgies — sumptuously lit and indulgently paced, filled with so much ecstatically writhing flesh you almost couldn’t tell where one soul ended and the next began.

The camera can capture many subtle things — inauthenticity, intellect, Timothée Chalamet’s mustache — but the camera can also be tricked. By many accounts, Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd hated working with each other on Moonlighting, but what the camera captures is an undefinable passion and a fiery friction that completely blur any line between love and hate. You just know that Shepherd’s prickly ex-model turned private eye Maddie and Willis’ disreputable gumshoe David want to do something together — and then you fill in the rest. Watch the legendary “Atomic Shakespeare” episode, which rather freely adapts The Taming of the Shrew, for a flawless illustration of how bickering can be foreplay in the right hands. Viewers wanted these two to canoodle. Viewers needed these two to canoodle. But then when they canoodled? If you believe the conventional narrative, viewers decided the heat was gone and stopped watching. That’s not really what happened, and the reasons for Moonlighting struggling after the removal of will-they/won’t-they tension have almost nothing to do with onscreen factors.

Of all the classic monsters in the canon, none has more enduring sex appeal than the vampire (see entries 12 and 15 on this list). And few shows about those bloodsuckers have capitalized on that allure more shamelessly than Alan Ball’s delectably trashy soap, committed above all else to showing us hot people eating each other and eating each other out. These were folks so hot to go they’d literally bone right out of the grave — as Bill (Stephen Moyer) did with Sookie (Anna Paquin) in season one — and who could blame them? The sticky Louisiana heat had a way of melting the clothes right off an adventurously dirty ensemble, including horny himbo Jason (Ryan Kwanten), uninhibited perma-virgin Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) and, of course, commanding and charismatic sheriff Eric (Alexander Skarsgard). The rendezvous were unapologetically graphic, celebrating attractions across all manner of supernatural and sexual orientations. Sure, the LGBTQ+ rights metaphor the series started as never fully worked to begin with, and true, the storylines veered over seven seasons from juicy to unhinged to frustratingly nonsensical. But you can’t say it didn’t deliver on the promise of its opening chorus: “I wanna do bad things with you.” 

As the saying goes, what happens on vacation stays on vacation. Maybe that’s why a certain fictional global luxury resort chain has a way of inspiring guests, locals and employees alike to unleash their hottest and most bothered selves. With no shortage of opportunities to lounge poolside in skimpy outfits, characters eyeball each other with envy or lust, seduce one another for sport or for pay, and cave to longings they’ve scarcely allowed themselves to admit they had in the first place. Creator Mike White boasts an insatiable curiosity about the intricacies of desire, an impish taste for boundary-pushing and, in HBO, a network partner all too happy to let him go wherever those impulses lead. Whether it’s Armond (Murray Bartlett) rimming a comely employee (Lukas Gage) in season one, Harper (Aubrey Plaza) and Ethan (Will Sharpe) getting off on their mutual jealousy in season two, or even the, ahem, unusual bond between the Ratliff brothers (Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola) in season three — to name just a few of this drama’s many flings and flirtations — sex courses through every outing of the anthology, in all its sweet or salacious or shocking glory.

This funny, tender series about gay men in San Francisco had fans split between Team Richie and Team Kevin. The former — a Mexican American barber played by Raúl Castillo with soulful depths you could swim in — was basically the dream boyfriend. The latter, a Brit video game savant given a mischievous twinkle in his eye by Russell Tovey, was the tasty trouble — officially partnered and emotionally unavailable. The fact that Jonathan Groff’s Patrick had off-the-charts chemistry with them both made his eternal indecision agonizing. This was a show where the sex could be frisky, steamy, messy or awkward but always integral to the plot. The sexiest scene over two seasons and a movie was in the season two opener — written and directed by Andrew Haigh — in which Patrick spends a weekend at the Russian River with his core friend group, Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez), Dom (Murray Bartlett) and Doris (Lauren Weedman). Set to the intoxicating beat of Sister Sledge’s “Lost in Music,” the episode peaked with a party in the woods, a queer utopia under moonlight and a shimmering disco ball. Patrick’s drugs kicked in just as he was pulled into the trancelike music and a rush of collective ecstasy that also laid the foundations for hot mess Agustin’s salvation via adorable bear Eddie (Daniel Franzese).

Total number of people who, after watching the beginning of The Americans, were surprised to discover that stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys were a couple in real life: zero. The actors had a combustible chemistry that was palpable from the first episode of this ’80s-set espionage drama about two KGB operatives in an arranged marriage that brings them to the United States and has them carrying out spy business at the highest level. For Elizabeth and Philip, sex is part of the toolkit, just like miniature cameras, hidden microphones and, yes, wigs. It’s also something they enjoy, both with each other and with their countless unsuspecting targets over six years. The Americans is tremendously savvy about the ways people use sex, whether it’s transactional or as an expression of power or, heaven forbid, as a sign of love. As a result, the sex in The Americans is raw and graphic, sometimes chilly and sometimes scaldingly hot — and thanks to the extra-textual layer introduced by Russell and Rhys’ offscreen coupling, it sometimes feels private and sometimes feels wholly voyeuristic.

When Insecure premiered, it made waves for depicting authentic-feeling friendships among Black women: Issa (Issa Rae), Molly (Yvonne Orji), Kelli (Natasha Rothwell) and Tiffany (Amanda Seales) navigated life as messy 20-somethings in L.A. with an endearing clumsiness. But Rae’s show also served serious eye candy and steamy hookups. Each season included a rotating cast of seductive regulars — from handsome Lawrence (played by a charming Jay Ellis) to smoldering Nathan (embodied with effortless swagger by Kendrick Sampson) — and swoon-worthy recurring guests like Y’lan Noel’s Daniel and Alexander Hodge’s Andrew, affectionately known as Asian Bae. Their pretty faces and chiseled physiques were shot with an intimate sensuality thanks to EP/director Melina Matsoukas and cinematographer Ava Berkofsky’s alluring visual style. An understated erotic current ran through the entire series, whether it was Molly and Andrew stealing glances from across the table during their first date or Issa and Daniel succumbing to their desires during a recording session. Insecure was always funny, but it also took sexual pleasure and appetites — especially those of Black women — very seriously.

Here’s where our vocabulary is perhaps inadequate for this task. Nobody in Hannibal really has sex — which didn’t stop fans from reading into the subtext of the central relationship between Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham and Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter, two wildly intelligent men whose game of cat-and-mouse played out as an intimate and insinuating homoerotic tango. And if you were hot for “Hannigram,” you were far from alone. But rather than being explicitly pervy, Bryan Fuller’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novels and characters is sensual in the most literal way possible: It’s a nightmarish feast for the senses, stunningly shot primarily by James Hawkinson. What other shows on this list do for an exposed nipple or taut buttock, Hannibal did for operatic and grotesque murder tableaux and plates of food so magnificently composed that you’d happily chow down, even suspecting what the mystery protein might be. It’s not our fault if you don’t find decaying corpses coated in plump mushrooms, sumptuously sautéed (but mysteriously sourced) sweetbreads, and Richard Armitage’s horned demon back tattoo to be hot.

How can a show be sexy when almost all of its actual onscreen sex sucks? That’s the magic of Mad Men, in which fans were “treated” to 92 episodes of impotence and inappropriate relationships. However, like the cigarettes that fill the series’ frames with a nostalgic haze, the physical couplings and connections in Mad Men smoldered. Part of it was the costuming by Janie Bryant, which made every member of the attractive cast look as good as any of them (or any of us) could ever hope to look again — there’s a reason social media used to be full of Mad Men Yourself avatars. And part of it was that costumes aside, Matthew Weiner assembled an impeccable ensemble and put them through cycles of obsession, repression and simmering appetites that always bordered on sexual, even when they weren’t. It’s a show about salesmanship, and what has Madison Avenue taught us sells most consistently? Sex. So whether it was Jon Hamm’s Don Draper and his string of toxic romances and infidelities, Jessica Paré’s crooning of “Zou Bisou Bisou” or Christina Hendricks’ Joan and her ability to use her sexuality as a tool of power, Mad Men was always teasing you into believing that the next tryst, the next consummation, would be the right one.

Gregg Araki has been celebrating the sexual outlaw since his 1992 breakout The Living End put him at the forefront of the New Queer Cinema movement. For one gloriously horny season on Starz, he brought an omnivorous fuckfest to TV. You can imagine a casting call for insanely hot actors willing to get naked in a neon-blitzed Los Angeles possibly on the brink of annihilation. Starting in the pilot, when Avan Jogia’s Ulysses hooks up in an alley with Tyler Posey’s Gabriel, this joyously sex-positive, unapologetically bonkers and endearingly sweet series continually reconfigures the erotic couplings — and triplings — with a cheeky audacity that suggests the creator-director knew this was going to be a one-and-done gig. The connections go beyond humans to extraterrestrials, with Araki veteran James Duval as an unhoused Angeleno raped and impregnated by a reptilian alien. But there might be nothing sexier than the puppy-dog whimper that escapes Desmond Chiam’s himbo actor Jethro when he stumbles onto the sex toy stash of bored cam-girl Carly (Kelli Berglund) and consents to let her spank him. Character names like Ford Halstead and Severine Bordeaux sound lifted right out of Dynasty — another show full of reshuffled sexual combos — but this is a delirious pop-art original that now seems like a receding dream. To quote Carly: “It’s so fairy tale-slash-vintage gay porn.”

In the aftermath of the third season of The White Lotus, we’re a little reticent to call a show about two sisters one of the sexiest ever made, but Tanya Saracho’s Vida isn’t that kind of sexy. Fortunately, it’s every other kind of sexy, as Saracho and a team of writers and directors are infectiously giddy to be getting this graphic, this bilingual and this specific in telling a story about grief, sisterhood, identity, gentrification and East Los Angeles. Anchored by the sultry lead performances of Melissa Barrera and Michel Prada (who, in turn, are boosted by a set of sizzling-hot scene/sex partners including Carlos Miranda, Maria Elena Laas, Roberta Colindrez, Adrian Gonzales and Raúl Castillo), Vida uses its wide-reaching sexual vocabulary — we lost count of all of the positions and permutations we’d never seen before in a mainstream show — to explore character dynamics and inspire conversations as provocative as they are titillating. Rarely have the food, language, music and flesh of a single neighborhood been brought together in a way that feels so vibrant, so satisfying, so erotically alive.