Sex/Life: Why this trashy show, panned by critics, is so popular in Australia

It’s the number one Netflix show in the country that features a full frontal appendage that has just about broken the internet. The trashy TV series Sex/Life is so bad it’s almost lapped itself and become good again — if good is laughing out loud at a show that was pitched as a female gaze drama. Based on the book 44 Chapters About 4 Men by BB Easton, Sex/Life introduces viewers to seemingly insatiable housewife Billie (played by Sarah Shahi), who wakes up one day eight years and two kids into her marriage with husband Cooper, bored and unsatisfied. While Cooper (Mike Vogel) gives her “85 per cent” of the life she wants, he is failing to stoke her fire. Enter Australian actor Adam Demos as bad boy Sex/Life character Brad, her ex-boyfriend with his larger than life member. Billie begins journaling in a word document about her wild nights spent with Brad, who she has explored the entire Kama Sutra text with. Naturally her husband Cooper goes snooping and discovers the soft porn novella she has been busy typing away while the nanny looks after their kids. Thus begins eight episodes of the same cat and mouse chase. Brad reaches out to Billie and wants her back, Billie is torn between exploding her family life for her hot ex or making things work with Cooper, Cooper gets big dick envy and acts out. Without ruining the ending, even the finale episode follows the recipe of those that came before it. There is no beginning, middle and end in this TV show. Rather each episode leaves you with a bit more deja-vu than the one previous, a strenuous storyline keeps you clicking “next episode” while the neon-lit soft porn scenes pad out the rest. The critics haven’t been kind. It has got a meagre 31 per cent audience score on critic platform Rotten Tomatoes. Cats got 53 per cent. Cats. Equally racy 50 Shades of Grey managed to bag 41 per cent. The Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson gave it just two stars, writing “nothing goes deep, except for, well, you get the idea”. TIME magazine’s Judy Berman said the show was “so bad, it’s funny” while AV club reviewer Danette Chavez scathingly quipped that it should have been nothing more than a “quickie”. Viewers tore shreds off the Netflix show on review site IMDb, with one user writing “no wonder so many people get divorced, they watch this trash on TV”. “A self-indulgent sex fest with very little substance,” another added. Put simply? Sex/Life is perfect for “when you are dealing with a horrible hangover: you are barely awake but you need to watch/hear something that requires the bare minimum of your intellectual capacity”, as IMDb user Elise Thomsie so eloquently put it. So why has a show that critics and fans alike have almost unanimously panned as pointless trash –— nay, landfill — captured the attention of the world, and Australia, this week? Blame COVID. At home, most of Australia has been in some form of lockdown for the past two weeks leaving millions with little more to do than watch Netflix and chill. Housewives can day dream about Aussie hunk Demos, or Vogel, pictured below, pick your player — and Gen Z get the kick back of an added TikTok challenge. That’s right, there is now a viral TikTok challenge that has people filming their “blind reaction” to a full frontal nudity scene in episode three. While it’s not the first time audiences have been treated to the naked penis in all its glory (Chris Pine in Outlaw King deserves an honourable mention), Demos’ third leg has sparked viral debate online as to whether or not it is a prosthetic. Mainly because it seems too big to be real. Naturally, Demos has been in no hurry to confirm or deny the magnitude of his manhood. But it has become such a talking point that Australian radio personality Em Rusciano conducted an informal investigation into the validity of the appendage — sharing messages from people claiming to have gone to high-school with the star confirming he was #bornthisway. Some more forgiving viewers have praised the show for championing the female gaze. Men having a mid-life crisis is a dime a dozen storyline. But a story that sees a woman balance breast pumps and lacy lingerie? Not so much. It’s worth noting that Sex/Life was produced by an entirely female team — series creator Stacy Rukeyser was a writer on One Tree Hill and made sure to have a female intimacy co-ordinator, Casey Hudecki. It’s a relatively new job title in Hollywood but a necessary one in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Rukeyser wanted to tell women that it was OK to “admit that we have desires, that we’ve had sexual experiences, and that we want to have more of them”. “Making a show about a woman who wants sex, who is emotionally and physically fulfilled by partaking in this very normal, human behaviour, is in and of itself a revolutionary act.” What as not revolutionary was an almost all-white cast, with the inclusion of a token black best friend Sasha, played by Margaret Odette, who does nothing more than have sex with Brad herself while lecturing Billie to not do the same. Love it or hate it, Sex/Life is grabbing attention — and headlines — for a reason. It’s elbowed its way through a genre dominated by pornographic scenes that have an edge of male sexual violence (50 Shades of Grey and 365 days) to return power to the female viewer. But more simply, it’s as addictive as good sex without actually having to get up and get some. Takeaway? Just go to episode three and pause at 20:03 minutes in.

Sex/Life: Why this trashy show, panned by critics, is so popular in Australia

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