The Pleasure of Talking about Bad Sex

by: Regina Mosch , November 10, 2025

Jacqueline Gibbs, Billy Holzberg, and Aura Lehtonen have written a highly compelling book about representations of sex in contemporary English-language TV series. The authors of Bad Sex: Sexuality, Gender and Affect in Contemporary TV offer a sharp critique of neoliberal landscapes both on and off-screen through an affective lens of sexual encounters that evade glamorous or straightforwardly satisfactory qualities. The writers quickly ascertain with great nuance what might initially seem like a sweeping term. For them, ‘bad sex’ has three meanings: it is firstly ‘non-normative,’ secondly ‘awkward and uncomfortable,’ and thirdly, it encompasses more ambivalent sexual encounters, descending into violent transgressions (Gibbs, Holzberg & Lehtonen 2025: 8). They acknowledge that the shows discussed in the volume are not always ‘neatly categorizable’ (2025: 9) through the frame of ‘bad sex.’ It is often the multi-layered complexity of sexual encounters that connects them.

Given the scope of the analysis, this book will be of interest to scholars of queer studies and television history, as well as those interested in affect and queer methodologies. The authors’ key focus is the ‘affective and political potential’ (2025: 2) of sex for unravelling wider social inequalities, expectations and transgression, particularly in relation to gendered, racialised, sexed bodies. Their context is the ‘highly precarious, but oversexed, neoliberal world’ (2025: 4). What contributes to the timeliness of this book is the fact that its authors never attempt to untangle sex from politics. ‘Bad sex’ for them is always, from the start, political.

Another significant merit of the book comes with the analysis of on-screen sexual encounters against the broadly understood history of television. The authors’ appreciation for the medium is evident once they state that the small screen offers a political conversation often missing from cinematic representations. Here, television is understood as a ‘cultural mediator’ (2025: 11) and as a ‘key site for rethinking the narrative and representational repertoires of sex and sexuality’ (2025: 10) as well as wider issues of cultural production. Streaming services have offered even more space to be taken up by those otherwise undervalued and excluded from the mainstream: ‘women, queer, trans and non-binary, Black and minoritized, working-class and disabled writers, directors, producers, and cast members’ (2025: 12). Influential authors such as Jack Halberstam (2020), José Esteban Muńoz (1996), Sara Ahmed (2006 & 2010) and Judith Butler (1993 & 1995) are part of the book’s vernacular; and in this vein, the authors address the diversified, yet still ambiguous landscape of representing sex on the small screen.

Chapter One suggests that Fleabag (2016, 2019) is a counter representation to the promises of neoliberalism and sexual liberation of shows from the 1990s and early 2000s, such as Sex and the City (1998-2004), The L Word (2004-9), Girls (2012-17) and Queer as Folk (1999-2000), in which characters largely had sex as a means of individual enjoyment; neatly presented as an integral part of a consumerist way of life but seemingly depoliticised through narrative storylines. In contrast, Fleabag revels in bitterness and biting irony that is apparent in the titular character’s (hetero)sexual encounters and her professional career. Still, neither the show nor the authors give easy answers as to whether there are satisfying alternatives to the ‘neoliberal fantasy of a “good life”’ (Gibbs, Holzberg & Lehtonen 2025: 32). This ‘heteropessimist’ view goes hand in hand with Fleabag’s anxious attachment to, and even yearning for, a white middle-class and patriarchal femininity. Hence, the key argument in this chapter can be summarised as follows: while Fleabag is aware of the problems of heteronormativity, it cannot fully untangle itself from them. Additionally, the authors offer a brief queer reading in which Fleabag’s attempts at sleeping with other women and her loving relationship with Boo could posit her as what Judith Butler has described as a ‘straight lesbian melancholic’ (Butler in Gibbs, Holzberg & Lehtonen: 41). This was a welcome diversion from the sense of detachment and affective distance which ultimately makes female desire and pleasure unimaginable in Fleabag.

Chapter Two examines the queer desire in Feel Good (2020-21) and Work in Progress (2019, 2021) as a possible alternative to heteronormative and hegemonic representations of sex. The authors underline that both shows grapple with the complex interplay of safety and pleasurable intimacy of queer love in the private sphere and the constant encroachment of neoliberalism, transphobia, racism, and trauma on the characters’ health. Sex between the characters is never glamourised or stereotypical, but filled with trust, ease, openness and respect, as well as messiness, kink, and confusion; thus, a representation often absent and yearned for by queer audiences. However, as the authors observe, it also remains an escape for the characters of Mae and George (Feel Good) and Abby and Chris (Work in Progress). They pursue sex as an imagined cure for their struggles, yet the good sex they have does not actually change anything. Pointing out that the characters’ privileges are explored only ambiguously, the authors here suggest that the characters remain confined by neoliberalism’s ‘ableist, classed, and gendered logics of productivity and self-improvement’ (2025: 58). Sex is indeed often ‘good’ in these shows, but it lacks a collective and transgressive potential.

In Chapter Three, the authors focus on gay men against the context of earlier shows in which they were represented either as desexualised (Sex and the City; Will & Grace, 1998-2006) or confidently exploring sexual pleasure (Queer as Folk; Looking, 2014-2015). In more recent shows, Please Like Me (2013-16) and Special (2019, 2021), the gay characters still search for good sex, but they struggle with ‘bad’ feelings: anxieties, insecurities, shame and feelings of unworthiness that society imposes on them. The authors compare Josh from Please Like Me and Ryan from Special to Ahmed’s ‘unhappy queers’ (2004) stuck in the struggle to live up to gay ideals. Awkward Josh is trapped in white male anxieties about his body, unable to form or perform sexual relations. Ryan conceals his disability to gain respect from society and stumbles from one unpleasant sexual encounter to another, filled with shame and bodily abjection. Nevertheless, both characters find alternative routes to intimacy and sexual connection, in what the authors call ‘good enough sex’: not a perfectly performed romance, yet a holding on to a sense of security and acceptance throughout, not only for their lovers but importantly for themselves.

Chapter Four explores sex during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and asks the question whether sex was as ‘good’— liberatory, radically pleasurable, situated against crisis and loss and therefore community-building—as 2020s audiences might nostalgically perceive it. In this chapter, the authors do not omit their political gaze nor their affective relations to contemporary TV shows. They argue that the push and pull between tragedy and pleasure turns the present-day programmes into an ‘object[s] of attachment’ (2025: 86) that tells us more about what today’s viewers hope sex to be. In It’s a Sin (2021), sex is portrayed as full of excitement as it opens new worlds for the characters, whether they are fulfilling their transgressive or domestic dreams. Yet, the sheer joy they experience is always connected to gay shame and the danger of the looming disease. By way of illustration, Pose (2018-2021) also shows the tender moments of sex amidst crisis rather than focusing on the risk often associated with it. Queer people here are, in fact, exposed to many dangers apart from HIV/AIDS, such as hate crimes or familial neglect. While remaining ambivalent about certain feminist concerns, such as women and care —as well as a more structural critique of sex work or poverty—both shows represent sex in connection with intimacy, friendship, survival, memory and nostalgic attachment to the audience.

In Chapter Five, the authors continue to trace our desire to return to a queer past that appeared simpler and sexually less demanding through reboots of Sex and the City, The L Word, and Queer as Folk. What exactly is these shows’ relation to the past that sparked the return of these well-known and liked on-screen characters? While all three 1990s and early 2000s predecessors portrayed their characters as having good, liberatory and pleasurable sex, revolutionary at the time, the 2020s reboots And Just Like That… (2021-), The L Word: Generation Q (2019-2022), and Queer as Folk (2022) grapple with their past as they introduce new storylines and character developments. They attempt to recuperate some of their problematic representations (e.g. predatory relations in Queer as Folk, transphobia in Generation Q or broken friendships in And Just Like That…) and make efforts to repair the affective unease of our post-feminist present, whether that is through greater diversity on screen, drastic narrative changes or direct references to past characters’ relations. At the same time, the authors offer honest, differing perspectives on their own affective attachments as viewers and those of other fan communities to these shows, revealing the difficulty in returning to past on-screen lovers.

The intersectional politics of sex and sexual violence in I May Destroy You (2020) form the basis of Chapter Six. The affects evoked by various non-consensual sexual encounters experienced by Arabella, Terry and Kwame have transcended the boundaries of the show with immense impact and confront us with the ambiguity between established boundaries of victim/perpetrator, guilty/innocent and crime/justice. Through an analysis of Arabella’s trauma, the authors demonstrate how particularly complex the aftermath of rape is, and how the show reframes it through the prism of intersectional politics. Failing institutions, revenge, social activism, friendship, and community are interwoven in this politics. Importantly, as the authors argue, pain in I May Destroy You is ‘socially and politically induced rather ontologically given’ (2025: 132), in contrast to other, more essentialising representations of victims of rape. Equally, agency is visually and narratively restored to Arabella’s body towards the breath-taking ending(s) of the show. It is friendship, community, and care that leave Arabella (and the viewer) with hope for a recovery and processing of her experience.

In the final chapter, the authors argue that Sex Education (2019-2023) and Euphoria (2019-) both offer an expansive outlook for the future of sex and sexual pedagogies from which today’s teenagers and millennial adults can learn. The often awkward, messy, yet enthusiastically optimistic depictions of teenage sex life in Sex Education are hereby contrasted with the abysmal and darker swell of Euphoria. Where comedic, earnest, and at times didactic sex scenes pervade Sex Education, Euphoria strikes with seemingly inescapable violence and fatigue. To me, the most valued argument that the authors put forth is that sex in Sex Education is ‘knowable’ (160; authors’ emphasis)—learnable through good communication—whereas Euphoria ‘develops a radically negative sexual pedagogy where any conscious possibility of transformation is forestalled by an often-cynical detachment’ (160-161), inviting the viewer to imagine other desires outside of a prescriptive pedagogy.

Bad Sex covers the variously twisted, troubling, caring, intimate, utopian, or absent imaginations of sex on-screen and leaves us with a curiosity about what the future of television might hold. The chapters are well-woven together, with cross-references and comparisons to previously discussed shows. The authors do not conceal their own perspective as queer millennial viewers and scholars. This makes for a highly pleasurable read, both intellectually and emotionally. Like the authors, I do not want to leave out my own affective responses when reading their book. Instead, I join their metaphorical kitchen table for a moment: I felt that the collective undercurrent of their approach, through which they watch, dissect and make sense of contemporary TV shows, was effective in offering a conversation with the reader, not only discursive and representational analyses. Bad Sex puts words to feelings about sex and representations of sex that are indeed often ambivalent, both on and off-screen.