http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969361?refCatId=1019&query=sexuality+on+tv+heats+up-kinda
The film channel IFC devotes four consecutive nights this week to “Indie Sex,” a documentary whose insights reinforce the notion that while American filmmakers are swell at blowing things up, since the blockbuster mentality took over they have lagged well behind Europe in their boldness regarding sexuality.
Television’s version of the independent sphere, however, appears to be gradually challenging this puritanical streak — a rebellion, perhaps, against the censorious attitude that transformed a fleeting glimpse of a breast during the Super Bowl into a cultural holy war.
Given the robust income of the porn industry, the public’s healthy appetite for sex is no surprise . For the most part, though, mainstream movies and broadcast television have pushed more freely ahead in violence and language than in sexuality, a fact that is underscored by the explosion of crime-oriented primetime dramas and the lucrative cinematic genre dubbed “torture porn.”
Showtime and HBO , however, are advancing into this void — the former with “The Tudors,” an Elizabethan serial more notable for its sexual cavorting than court intrigue; to be followed in August by “Californication,” which stars David Duchovny as a writer who takes solace from a busted relationship in the arms, thighs and bosoms of compliant women.
As for HBO, the more powerful pay service has witnessed the formidable pushback that unflinching sexuality can trigger in the squirmy response at the TV critics’ summer tour to the channel’s upcoming series “Tell Me You Love Me.” A dramatic look at various couples, the sex scenes are graphic enough to have provoked speculation among the scribes as to whether they were real or simulated (it’s the latter). Then again, that alarm shouldn’t be taken too seriously, inasmuch as some of the critics give the impression they haven’t gotten laid since the Reagan administration.