Skins S04E01

We can't, my mum will hear...

Television Series: Skins(S04E01- Thomas)
Release Date: January 2010
Actress: Lisa Backwell
Video Clip Credit: DeepBlueSea
Video Clip Info: [h264 at 3466Kbps; 21Mbs for 58s]



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Spartacus: Blood and Sand S01E02

I will always be with you; the Gods themselves could not keep me from your side...

Television Series: Spartacus: Blood and Sand (S01E02- Sacramentum Gladiatorum)
Release Date: January 2010
Actress: Erin Cummings & Lucy Lawless
Video Clip Credit: raziel02
Video Clip Info: [24,50 Mo; 3 min 16 sec; 2 videos]



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Spartacus: Blood and Sand S01E01

There is no life without you...

Erin Cummings discusses her graphic role in an exclusive interview with iesb.net...

Did you ever have any hesitation in doing the nudity on this series, or was it just about the context of it?

Erin: The way I feel about nudity, and how I think a smart actor approaches it, is that nothing can be done without putting thought into it. Every nude scene, for me, is on a case by case, show by show, episode by episode and even scene by scene basis. I don't think that there should be a general assumption of, "Oh, she'll do nudity," for any actress or actor. And, if you're going to do nudity, there is a way to do it.

In Spartacus, I'm the love interest to the lead actor and I am playing a character that is very well-rounded. Sura is not just there for the purpose of showing a naked body. She is there for showcasing a relationship, and it takes a very strong actor to be able to portray that role. The sex scenes are just one small part of that. In that context, I went, "Yeah, okay." I always look at it and say, "Is this a role that I would play otherwise? If she didn't have the love scene and there wasn't any nudity, would I really want to play this role?" And, if the answer is, "Yes," then you really have to go, "Okay, well then let me figure out what they're asking me to do, sexually speaking, and what I'm comfortable with."

IESB: Did it help that you knew and had worked with so many of the people involved with the series?

Erin: Knowing that Rick Jacobson had been brought on really made it a lot easier for me because I knew that Rick would never put me in a position of doing something that I felt uncomfortable with. And, I had read the script, so I knew how it was described. There was love scene that I had read, in a very early draft, and I called Steven DeKnight and said, "I am not doing that. That is not going to happen." Starz and the producers never made me feel pressured to do anything that I didn't feel was right and true for the character. When there was something that I went, "You know what? I don't know if this is really how Sura would go about this," they were very open and willing to make it work for the character. With most actors, if they want you to do X, Y and Z, whether it's sexual, physical or whatever, unless you give the actor a reason why their character would do it, they're not really going to be interested.

For me, playing the wife of Spartacus, I felt like the love scene was integral to telling the story of who they were. If you have the perfect marriage, it's not just about communication or having an understanding of one another. It's also about the chemistry and the passion that two people have for one another, and I think our scenes really showcase that. It was beautifully shot and I'm very proud of those scenes because I think they were very well done. I never found any of the love scenes to be gratuitous, in any way. Also, because of the fact that Andy was with me, every step of the way, wearing just as little clothing as I was, we went into it together. We said, "If we're going to do this, we're doing it together," and it made it a lot easier to be able to have him going through that with me.

Television Series: Spartacus: Blood and Sand (S01E01- The Red Serpant)
Release Date: January 2010
Actress: Erin Cummings & Viva Bianca
Video Clip Credit: raziel02
Video Clip Info: [25,60 Mo; 3 min 20 sec; 3 videos]



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Sex on TV

Sex on TV: It's increasingly uncut — and unavoidable
By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY

If sex sells, TV programmers are adding inventory to an already humongous sale.

Viewers are about to see full-frontal male nudity, heterosexual, homosexual and group sex, and graphic scenes rarely — if ever — seen on mainstream TV. And that's just on pay-cable Starz's fornication-heavy, 13-episode Spartacus: Blood and Sand (premieres Friday, 10 ET/PT), a 300-meets-Caligula epic about the Roman Empire's notorious slave/gladiator.

MTV plans a June launch of The Hard Times of RJ Berger, a scripted comedy about a nerdy 15-year-old whose cool quotient heats up when his anatomical gift is accidentally exposed. And basic-cable network Spike's just-launched raunchy college-sports comedy Blue Mountain State (Tuesdays, 10 ET/PT) showed a masturbating school mascot on the Jan. 12 premiere, while last night's episode featured a scene suggesting oral sex between a coed and jock before the opening credits.

"You need to get eyeballs. You need to be loud," says Spike programming chief Kevin Kay, who is pairing Blue Mountain with reruns of HBO's sex-centric Entourage. "Our viewers are experiencing content on other cable channels or the Web. Movies and video games are going after this audience, too."


TV's latest sexually charged offerings add to the current wave of attention-seeking — if less visually explicit — reality and scripted programs filled with frank themes and content, such as MTV's hookup-focused reality hit Jersey Shore.

ABC's Cougar Town — which had a memorable scene that implied Courteney Cox's character administering oral sex to her date — premiered last fall. Also new in the past year: HBO's Hung, a dramedy about a well-endowed teacher moonlighting as a prostitute; National Geographic TV's adult-themed documentary series, Taboo; and VH1's titillating Sex Rehab With Dr. Drew.

"You can definitely see an arms race," says FX programming chief John Landgraf, whose groundbreaking series such as Rescue Me and Nip/Tuck set new standards for mature content on basic cable.

Established shows are amping up, too. Nip/Tuck is wrapping its sixth and final season with boundary-pushing themes centered on its often sexually compulsive plastic surgeons, and ABC's Desperate Housewives has cast former Dexter star Julie Benz as a stripper for the series' fifth season.

Showtime's Secret Diary of a Call Girl returns Monday with hooker Belle (Billie Piper) looking for source material for another book through new sexual experiences with clients.

Showtime's aptly titled Californication recently ended its third season with sex-addicted Hank Moody (David Duchovny) getting more booty than ever — juggling three women while pursuing a fourth. Moody's best friend and manager (Evan Handler) grappled with an ex-wife and randy boss (Kathleen Turner), while guest star Rick Springfield, playing himself, had several solo and group conquests.

A long history

The subject of sex has been part of the medium almost since its start. But displays of sex, intimacy and even body parts, for the most part, have been evolutionary, not revolutionary.

In the 1950s, TV couldn't show married couples sleeping in the same bed. In the '60s, exposing the bellybutton of I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden was verboten. Braless jiggles on Charlie's Angels were considered daring in the '70s. But by the '90s, the expanse of adult-themed content on premium channels such as HBO and sex-infused music videos on MTV made baring the derriere of a hefty NYPD Blue cop acceptable to the masses on ABC.

"It's funny what's considered risqué these days," says Audrey Landers, whose sexpot image, burnished by eight seasons on '80s hit Dallas, led to a Playboy pictorial in 1983. Last year, the actress, singer and fashion designer was developing a cable reality show, which was rejected for its tameness. "They suggested my mother, 18-year-old niece and I sex things up by posing for Playboy," says Landers, 53.

Critics such as the Parents Television Council decry the mushrooming sexual content. "It's become downright ubiquitous," says council president Tim Winter. "Families are under siege, teenage girls are under siege. You don't know what the cultural impact will be down the road."

Others, such as Fordham University media observer Paul Levinson, say TV merely mirrors life. "It sounds radical, but this is healthy for popular culture," Levinson says. "Mainstream TV has been frozen in a very puritanical position by Congress, the FCC and the Supreme Court — all who don't seem to understand the First Amendment. Sex is part of life. If people are offended, there's a simple remedy: Don't watch."

Taste standards and broadcast guidelines aside, sexual content — and where to push boundaries — is largely established by programmers seeking traction among fickle viewers, then benchmarked by others who want to push the envelope.

"When advertising dollars are down you have to cut through — you have to get attention," says JD Roth, producer of NBC reality hit The Biggest Loser.

ABC programming chief Steve McPherson says he has faced no pressure to edge up content but acknowledges late prime-time slots offer opportunities. "If you can get a loud broadcast-acceptable 10 p.m. show, it's a time to take chances," McPherson says.

Moreover, broadcast executives acknowledge that premium-channel and basic-cable-channel rivals are altering the TV landscape.

"We don't want to be out of touch with the way society is going," says NBC's Angela Bromstad. "At the same time, you have to be careful what you put on air."

Says Doug Herzog, president of MTV Networks entertainment group: "The line moves every day, so you got to move with it. You can't put the genie back in the bottle."

'Spartacus': Roman hands

Initially pitched to NBC in tamer form, Spartacus: Blood and Sand oozes explicit content.

"The whole thing was pushing the boundaries on pretty much every level," says co-executive producer Robert Tapert, who is married to Spartacus star Lucy Lawless. "Once we wound up on (premium pay cable), we were able to really push the envelope."

Lawless portrays a conniving social climber who is nude in some scenes, commits adultery in others and uses sex to manipulate frenemies and family. One episode shows Lawless' character and her gladiator-camp-owner husband (John Hannah) manually stimulated by slaves before having sex. Upcoming episodes feature orgies and a gladiator whose large endowment ultimately leads to his downfall.

Noting the potentially off-putting content, the former Xena: Warrior Princess star concedes Spartacus isn't for everyone: "Pretty quickly, the audience has to realize they aren't in Kansas anymore. There will be (viewers) who are truly horrified and switch this off."

Of course, Starz executives hope for the opposite effect, and they believe Spartacus' underlying sex-and-gore themes will be provocative attention-grabbing devices to bolster viewership. They've already ordered a second season.

"People are going to stop in their tracks and say, 'Wow, that's something really different' — whether they approve of it or not," says Starz programming chief Stephan Shelanski. Starz is comfortable with content such as full-frontal male nudity because it has become more explicit in theatrical releases that eventually arrive on premium cable, such asBorat and Sex and the City , and on premium-cable originals such as HBO's Tell Me You Love Me.

Ironically, Showtime (The L Word , The Tudors , Weeds ) and FX, whose programming helped pave the way for harder-content offerings on rival networks, say they're pulling back on sexually provocative shows and stories.

"In terms of edginess, our content is less edgy today," Landgraf says. "Nip/Tuck is the edgiest show we've ever had, and we just haven't found a program to replace it with. Sons of Anarchy is less edgy than The Shield. At the end of the day, what makes a show like The Shield work is the quality from a storytelling standpoint. You watch because it's compelling, because it's good."

Says Showtime's Bob Greenblatt: "We're not trying to do things just to get attention and sell subscriptions. I'd say the network is a lot less sexy than it used to be. There's very little on United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie and Dexter. For me, its really just about having the freedom to go to those places if the stories and characters demand it."

'Natural evolution of things'

Californication creator Tom Kapinos says there'll be consequences for the central character's sexual rambunctiousness next season, and perhaps more of an attempt to keep his pants zipped. "I don't know how much further you can push things," Kapinos says. "But this is still a show about a single guy in L.A. There's a lot of trouble to get into."

Greenblatt notes Spartacus could raise the bar — or lower it — when it comes to both the pervasiveness and explicitness of TV sex. "I'm sure after Spartacus, there'll be more," he says. "It's the natural evolution of things."

Blue Mountain State producer Brian Robbins, whose credits include Smallville and One Tree Hill, says he's not surprised by the explicit sex on air these days.

The irony isn't lost on Robbins, perhaps best known as the long-haired lothario Eric Mardian on ABC's '80s sitcom Head of the Class. "I was the stud on that show, but I didn't get to do anything," Robbins says. These days, "anything goes."

And as far as Blue Mountain State? Says Robbins: "I'd be way too embarrassed to sit in a room with my mother watching it." Read more on this article...

Explicit sex returns to TV

Explicit sex scenes are in vogue again on TV, with new series such as True Blood — and this time women are calling the shots
By Andrew Billen

When was it that I realised that Percy Filth — as Jack Rosenthal’s sitcom The Lovers called sex around the time that television invented it — had made a return to the box?

Was it in the early minutes of Rome four years ago when Polly Walker as the voluptuous Atia energetically turned a freeman into her sex slave? Was it two years later when Californication debuted with a nun performing oral sex on David Duchovny? Or was it during this summer’s run of Desperate Romantics , a riskily unstuffy drama about the Pre-Raphaelites that required its actors, in the interests of historical authenticity, to agree to wear pubic hair wigs?

Actually, I think it was in August in Midsomer Murders. Detective Constable Jones became transfixed by an undraped model at a modelling class, and so did the camera. Objectors would have got short shrift. Within weeks Ofcom, television’s regulator, had rejected 37 complaints attracted by nudity on a Channel 4 programme called Life Class, and that went out at 12.30pm. But if Midsomer Murders, the darling of Middle England, was casually showing naked breasts before the watershed then truly had television exorcised the spirit of Mary Whitehouse.


Let me be frank. I was a child of the Sixties, which made me an adolescent of the Seventies. I may have now reached the age when I want to fast-forward sex scenes to get back to the plot, but bliss was it in that dawn to be male and pubescent. Sex was saturating the culture. Sitcoms such as The Lovers tittered about it (pre-marital sex was the joke), documentaries agonised over it, American imports such as Charlie’s Angels traded on it, but the canny British teenager knew where to find it: on native drama productions shortly after the bewitching hour of 9pm.

Sometimes the female nudity — and it was always female in those days — was more or less integral. Few upmarket viewers in 1976 thought any less of I, Claudius for its nude scenes. You would not have had to be Dennis Potter (although it actually was) to write sex into Casanova in 1971. You might even argue that ITV’s tale of family incest Bouquet of Barbed Wire, described by Clive James as “The House of Atreus transferred to Peyton Place”, demanded more nudity than it actually got — years later the columnist Richard Littlejohn confidently averred Susan Penhaligon had taken her kit off, forcing her to protest, flattered, that she hadn’t. But what of the 1972 intelligent supernatural thriller The Stone Tape? Why 80 minutes in, did a breast poke from a dressing gown worn by an actress who was not even credited?

This may have been the era of clean-up TV campaigns, but deep within the cocoon of television, Kenith Trodd, who produced some of its most memorable and sexiest plays, recalls fighting very few battles about sexual explicitness, aside from the hard case of Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle in which a disabled woman was raped. He does recall receiving a note from a suit regarding Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven that read: “Please cut Eileen’s tits and all of Bob [Hoskins]’s cock.” “But I suppose what I am saying is that it came down not so much to policy as to individual quirks when dealing with sex.”

In 1989, however, a Potter series (not, after a falling out, produced by Trodd) delivered such an orgy of misogynistic sex that it provoked a rapid detumescence in television drama. Blackeyes told the story of an elderly male novelist making a lurid sexual fantasy out of his niece’s life. “His motives on Blackeyes were to speak up apologetically for all men,” Trodd recalls, “and he got it wrong. There was a discussion programme, some residue of Late Night Line-Up, after the first episode where everyone extolled it. But by the second, the feministic voices had got their act together and realised it was not friendly to them.”

Percy Filth did not suddenly cower and disappear. In 1990 A Sense of Guilt by Andrea Newman, the writer of Bouquet of Barbed Wire, required the very young actress Rudi Davies (who later left the business) to strip in front of a much older man (Trevor Eve, who did not). Two years later, The Camomile Lawn, directed by Peter Hall, featured Jennifer Ehle in a remarkably nude lovemaking scene. The same year Between the Lines, a gritty series about police corruption, rapidly earned the nickname “Between the Loins”.

It was quite a way to go out and the three series showed how sex bestrode the dramatic range: an upmarket soap, a historical saga and a piece of social realism (realism has always claimed nudity as a credential). But thereafter, there was less and less female flesh for the adolescent to admire.

Professor Jonathan Bignell, in An Introduction to Television Studies, notes that “although it had become common to discuss sexual activity in current affairs, documentary and other public service discussion genres, the dramatic representation of sexual activity had become increasingly self-censored by broadcasters as a result of the Aids crisis”. Television became as scared of sex as everyone else. The adaptor Andrew Davies earned in those years a reputation for slipping sex into the classics, but the sexual content of his Pride and Prejudice was actually confined to Colin Firth’s damp shirt. For Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth there would be no romps on a lawn, camomile or otherwise.

There was explicit sex on TV but to make sure of finding it you had to buy a satellite dish or wait for the arrival of Channel 5 and its avowed early policy of showing “films, f***ing and football”. On the main channels you were more likely to see a nude female stretched out cold on a mortician’s block than warming a bed. What that said about the period was a cause for concern all by itself. Inspired by the big screen’s hip new purveyors of violence such as Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, television thrillers from Prime Suspect and Cracker on, became increasingly bloody and explicit. Gore replaced groping.

Meanwhile, internal structures were changing in TV, leaving programme-makers with less autonomy and more bureaucracy, the management method that likes to say no. Trodd recalls that by the mid-Nineties he would go to a script meeting with the late Mark Shivas, Head of BBC Drama, and find an assistant head of drama sitting there too — “and what she was doing there was to try and second-guess and pre-guess what we were up to”.

It would, more and more, be a she. And here we reach a paradox. The first wave of women television executives frowned on their sex being exploited by middle-aged male writers. They are now in charge — and the corsets are being thrown off once more. Hilary Salmon, of the BBC, executive producer of Desperate Romantics, explains: “We are all women now and we can do what we like. We closed the male toilets on this floor! I just don’t think we have to wave flags about where we stand on these issues. There is a shared sensibility.”

Salmon believes that it is The Line of Beauty , made in 2006, that really demonstrates the change between sexual explicitness then and now. “The sex in it is very explicit and between men. We did think very carefully before showing men having sex in the park but we felt it was important to show it quite explicitly because the book and the adaptation took the view that homosexual sex was as natural as heterosexual sex.” One of four female producers on the serial, Salmon notes it was a long way from the day when as a junior programme-maker she rowed with Charles Denton, then Head of BBC Drama, over his opinion (probably correct at the time) that full-frontal female nudity was acceptable to audiences but full-frontal male was not.

So when it came to Desperate Romantics this summer, there was considerable freedom for a male writer, Peter Bowker, and a male director, Paul Gay, to produce explicit sex scenes. “We had,” Gay says, “many discussions about not wanting to make a dry, dusty period drama and to make it sexy and contemporary, fun and playful.” Far from there being no-nudity clauses in the actors’ contract, it was made clear during casting that full-frontal nudity might be required, although merkins would be provided, where necessary, to ensure pubic authenticity. The fair-share of filth policy resulted in an upmarket audience led by women.

But this autumn the surest way to see sexual explicitness is to watch imported American shows such as Californication, The Tudors and, a newcomer, True Blood, starting tomorrow on Channel 4 after its run on FX. Much more sexy than scary, its star Anna Paquin, who plays the telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, is regularly to be seen in hot sex scenes, which are then posted on the net. After decades in which American television, fearful of the Bible Belt and advertisers’ sensibilities, was our prudish cousin, the arrival of HBO changed everything. Indeed, even the most ardent admirer of The Sopranos might wonder why quite so many scenes were established with shots of topless pole dancers at the Bada Bing. Equally, the revered men who made The Wire displayed a strong preference for nude scenes featuring top-heavy young actresses. The influence of the mores of these prestigious cult dramas on British directors should not be underestimated.

And the fact is that if they show it, we are unlikely to complain. Research for Ofcom in 2005 concluded that sexual imagery was less of a worry to viewers than explicit language and nudity, per se, was no longer a concern at all. “While there is some concern about the prevalence of sexual imagery, particularly with regard to children, many regard it as a sign of a more open and tolerant society,” it reported.

Cynicism is an issue for us all. Executives know sex reaches those elusive young viewers (look at the early nude locker-room scenes in Skins). It is also true, as Ofcom also found, that older viewers can still be upset. When I recently wrote in a television review that I would be campaigning for more sex on television, an older reader wrote to me: “I feel that I am being made a compulsory voyeur, so I tend to close my eyes until the grunting is over.”

But although I am probably nearer my correspondent’s age than the Skins demographic I disagree. It seems to me that for once television is moving in the right direction, away from gratuitous violence and towards a more relaxed, more continental and less sexist attitude to one of the most pleasurable facts of life. That naked artist’s model in Midsomer? She attracted a solitary complaint to Ofcom. Quite right too. Long live Percy Filth, I say.
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