Best Sex On TV

There are awards for bad erotic writing (the Literary Review's annual gong, for instance) so it seems only fair that we also recognise those rare occasions when the arts provide us with a description of sex as satisfying as the experience it describes, says Paul Jones. Writing in the Radio Times, he transcribes how last night's New Girl on E4 saw the usually hapless Jess (Zooey Deschanel) telling her flatmate Nick about a recent mindblowing hook-up (with someone else's blind date).

Jess: "I had the best sex of my life last night. He brewed me like a fine chamomile."

Nick: "Oh, so that was you. I thought that was a couple bums fighting."

Jess: "It wasn't. It was me, having sex. I left my body, went up to heaven, saw my grandparents, thought it was weird that I saw my grandparents, came back down, I became a werewolf, I scared some teenagers. I came back into my body. Only thing is, he thinks my name is Katie. And that I'm a dancer and/or something involving puppets."


Just like Jess, New Girl is on fire at the moment. A couple of episodes into the new second series, it's one of the funniest things on TV, combining dysfunctional yet loveable central characters, flights of fancy – which avoid becoming too self-consciously "kooky" like so many US comedies – and a whole bunch of brilliant one-liners, delivered with beautiful comic timing by a talented cast (and, hey, if they happen to be easy on the eye too, who's complaining?).

Last night's episode also included the following scene, in which Jess's friend Cece attempts to help the newly empowered Jess conduct a "dirty" text message conversation with a(nother) guy she met in a bar.

Jess: "He says, 'Can't stop thinking about what you're gonna wear tonight.' How do I respond?"

Cece: "With a simple... 'Or not wear.'"

Jess: "Okay."

Cece: "Okay?"

Jess: "'Or not wear because sex happens naked.' Send."

Cece: "Okay, let me help you with that... 'Just kidding. Get ready for a night you will never forget.' Okay?"

Jess: "'Because once you see my body, you will go brain-dead and have memory loss.' Send. Oh no! Autocorrect changed 'body' to 'meat bar'."

Meat bar. Now that's a phrase even a Bad Sex award winner would think twice about using in a sentence...