From orgies to marathon sex scenes: how did period drama get so raunchy?

The Guardian

2 days ago

Outlander first sizzled our screens in 2014, with Vulture soon declaring that the period drama had 'the best sex on television'. Its tale of second world war nurse Claire (Caitriona Balfe) time-travelling to 18th-century Scotland and falling in love with clansman Jamie (Sam Heughan) certainly earned the accolade. The wedding night episode features Claire reaching such an explosive orgasm that it requires smelling salts for viewers to get through. There's a knee-trembling 'castle cunnilingus' scene and, at one point, the extraordinary moment when Claire saves Jamie's life by masturbating him. It has proved so popular that in 2026 its eighth (and final) season will air.
In the last year we've had shows such as Carême, about a Napoleonic-era celebrity chef who likes foreplay with a dollop of whipped cream, and orgy-filled Mary & George, about the lover of James I of England/James VI of Scotland. Outlander has even spawned a prequel, Blood of My Blood, about the entwining stories of Claire's and Jamie's parents, two couples who also enjoy time travel and sex. Sure enough, there's a romp against a table less than half an hour in, a dizzying amount of hand brushes and a sex scene that clocks up nearly 10 long minutes. How did period dramas get so raunchy?
Thirty years ago, things were much more chaste. The iconic moment of Andrew Davies's 1995 BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that shook up the genre didn't even involve nudity – just Colin Firth's Mr Darcy emerging from a lake in a soaking white shirt.
Firth's chemistry with Jennifer Ehle, who played Elizabeth Bennet, was undeniable: the two started dating in real life during filming. No one has sex in the series, but Davies wrote in scenes to show the hormonal young characters' physicality and sexuality, and looked for 'any legitimate excuse to get some of that kit off'. It certainly won over fans: last year, the shirt Firth wore sold at auction for £25,000. One professor even told the BBC that the series has 'almost usurped the original novel in the minds of the public'.
Seven years later, Davies shocked the nation by writing a drama that makes Pride and Prejudice look like CBeebies: an adaptation of Sarah Waters' Victorian-set lesbian novel Tipping the Velvet. Nan (Rachael Stirling) is an oyster girl who is enchanted by androgynous stage performer Kitty (Keeley Hawes). She joins her act in bohemian London and they start a sexual relationship. It divided critics, with one calling the first sex scenes 'dull'. He should have stuck around for episode two.
Anna Chancellor enters as dominatrix aristocrat Lady Diana – the proud owner of a massive dildo. 'It was leather, wasn't it?' asks Chancellor when I remind her of it over video call. 'Was [its size] believable?' She has never seen the series and says she would have to be 'really old' to stomach watching herself in it. Filming was physically difficult as the camera went round and round while she rocked on Nan's lap. That said, she would 'quite like to play [Diana] again', and adds: 'It gave me a big lesbian following, which I was thrilled with. It's a privilege.'
The show was groundbreaking for queer sex on screen, but Chancellor makes the point that it was directed by a straight man (Geoffrey Sax). 'I think they wouldn't do that now,' she ponders. Intimacy coordinators weren't a thing back then either. Even though she admits to some of their tasks being more cringey than actually shooting sex scenes (like softly touching each other's face and hair), she says a great one can help map out the characters' physical relationships more convincingly: 'It's how you get there.'
Bodice-and-breeches rippers soon took off. In 2007, all historical fact went out of the window when Jonathan Rhys Meyers played Henry VIII as a hunky, brunette sex god in The Tudors. Within four minutes of the opening episode, Henry and Catherine of Aragon (Maria Doyle Kennedy) were bonking. Hundreds of outraged fans complained it was too Americanised, dumbed down and hypersexual. 'These people didn't have TVs, they didn't have cars, they didn't have iPods. They had sex. What else do you think they did?' Meyers once said, clearly fed up of defending it on press tours.
Anyway, Henry was left in the dust in 2015, when a topless Aidan Turner scythed his way on to prime time in Poldark. It set pulses racing to such an extent that Turner came to resent it: 'It began to overshadow the show and that frustrated me. It just got boring,' he admitted of a scene that would go on to be voted TV moment of the year.
But it wasn't the only scene to trigger debate. A scene in which Poldark forcefully kisses ex-lover Elizabeth (Heida Reed), who pushes him away and says 'no' until finally conceding to sex was criticised as a 'rape fantasy'. Poldark isn't the only period drama to feature problematic sex scenes. Outlander is continually pressed on its repeated use of brutal rape as a narrative tool – which they put down to this being a reality that can't be totally ignored: rape only became a statutory offence in England and Wales in 1956 (and marital rape wasn't included until 1991). In Scotland, rape was an offence in common law only until 2009. Catriona Balfe also justifies it by saying: 'We have a problem in our society with sexual assault, and it's reflected in our storytelling.'
With TV audiences becoming less conservative and streaming networks offering new freedoms, period bonkbusters went wild in the early 2010s, from The Borgias (which featured an incest scene) to Versailles ('four racy scenes in just 17 minutes!' cried the Daily Mail). Like most of the shows before them, they were largely written and directed by men. They also nearly always featured white leads; period drama has always had a problem with diversity. However, coinciding with the #MeToo movement, a spate of brilliant female storytellers were about to bring nuance and raise the bar once more.
In 2017, Alison Newman and Moira Buffini co-created Harlots, a Georgian-set drama with a diverse cast, starring Lesley Manville and Samantha Morton as warring brothel owners (it has recently enjoyed a new lease of life in Netflix's Top 10 chart). Set in a time when sex work was incredibly valuable to the economy, it is, of course, stuffed with graphic scenes. But don't conflate sex with 'sexy'; Newman even bristles at the word when I mention it to her over the phone. It was unofficially banned from the writing room, and that wasn't all: 'We never said titillating.'
The show was made entirely by women from what Newman calls 'the whore's eye view', following 'a sort of reverse Bechdel test' with no more than two men in a room. Sex was a job for these women and it needed to feel real: it's often boring or humiliating, sometimes enjoyable and at times dangerous. There's also barely any nudity because undressing took too long.
Still, there are rare moments when sex is an act of love or passion, such as when Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) sleeps with male sex worker Daniel Marney (Rory Fleck Byrne) after a season spent building a friendship. 'Charlotte obviously had a very complicated relationship with sex, so for her to let go like that or make herself vulnerable – it was a big moment.' That is indeed what makes sex, well, sexy (sorry Newman!). 'The drama is in the desire – and what happens before and after the act is most interesting … If it's just a couple of people shagging, then what's the point?'
Around the same time, Sally Wainwright was working on Gentleman Jack, a drama about 19th-century Yorkshire landowner Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) who is widely considered the first modern lesbian, and her relationship with Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle). Tabloids called the same-sex scenes 'steamy' and 'shocking', but a lot of care was taken with them. 'We used the camera to come in on us and find intimate moments,' Jones said. 'By the end, me and Sophie were like two nans with a cup of tea. Like, covers off, hanging out. And it was great.'
Andrew Davies also created another barrier-breaking adaptation of Austen – her unfinished novel Sanditon. This time, he went as far as adding in sex scenes. 'I write something that I would like to watch,' he said. 'And I suppose the sexing it up thing comes in fairly naturally.' Not only that, a scene showing the bums of two nude male characters going for a swim – which they would have done in those days – raised the issue of objectification. 'Are there different standards? So what if there are,' star Kris Marshall said. 'Is it the objectification of men when we've had the objectification of women for so long?' (A 2016 report found that female nudity was almost three times as likely as male in Hollywood films.)
But raunch comes in all forms. For many viewers, one of the most erotic scenes on television in recent years was Andrew Scott in silk pyjamas dancing to T Rex's Dandy in the Underworld. He played Lord Merlin in Emily Mortimer's adaptation of Nancy Mitford's 1930s coming-of-age story The Pursuit of Love. It was a casting masterstroke. Merlin sticks his middle finger up, slinks around and – in a flooring moment – abruptly kisses one of the beautiful young things, wipes his mouth and spins her away. 'That was all him, he just delivered,' Mortimer tells me over a call. 'It just came so easily, and he went for it. He has exactly the right amount of charm, fearlessness and a kind of twinkle.' It was shot during lockdown and the first thing Scott said to her after filming that scene was: 'I just feel so lucky to be at a party!'
The reaction of Lily James's teenage character Linda, who is watching from the sidelines in a ballroom, mirrors our blushing at home: she is full of lust and longing for life to start, and finds Merlin's sexual liberation almost too painfully sexy to watch. 'Lily did it so well,' says Mortimer. 'It's hilarious but also kind of heartbreaking and very recognisable.'
Smaller moments really do have the power to fluster a nation. Regency-era Bridgerton is one of the biggest and raciest shows today – and a celebration of how far we have come regarding sex in period drama, with diverse characters having lots of sex that is both a hoot to watch and always female focused. It also gave life to the more X-rated spin-off Queen Charlotte (she did have 15 babies, after all). But, arguably, it is Regé-Jean Page's Duke of Hastings simply licking a spoon that went viral and became Bridgerton's most definitive scene.
For now, though, it's full steam ahead in Blood of My Blood. Harriet Slater, who plays Jamie's mother Ellen, tells me the chemistry read with Jamie Roy (her onscreen forbidden lover Brian) was 'unlike any other'. Roy says: 'The sparks do fly.' And there's that epic sex scene, whose shooting involved turning raunchiness into something as highly choreographed and rehearsed as a stunt or dance. Sometimes, though, you can have too much sexual tension. 'On the very first take I burst out laughing! I got told off very swiftly,' smiles Roy. 'If you take it too seriously, you get too tired!' adds Slater. But did they pull it off? 'Smashed it.'
Outlander: Blood of My Blood is on MGM+ via Prime Video on 9 August.
This article was amended on 1 August 2025. An earlier version said that rape only became illegal in the UK in 1956. This is when it became a statutory offence in English and Welsh criminal law; it had long been a criminal offence in common law.