When it comes to TV sex, I’m a prude - and proud of it!

I didn’t catch BBC 2’s recent historical drama series, The Crimson Petal and the White. I’m not partial to costume drama, the artful awkwardness of the title annoyed me, and the preview clips suggested it was all about Victorian prostitutes. And I’m tired of being asked to feel guilty about what horrid, hypocritical men in mutton-chop sideboards and top hats did to all those poor, innocent women well over a century ago. Thought I’d give it a miss. 

Good call, as it turned out. My wife caught some of it, and tells me it featured full frontal male nudity (as a possessor of a standard set of meat and two veg myself, I really don’t want a gander at anyone else’s). And female private parts and fellatio and a lot of other stuff you tend not to get on Midsomer Murders. 

I must have been twenty or so the last time nudity or simulated sex acts in a mainstream film enthralled me (I can’t remember ever being similarly affected by anything on TV – as a teenager I’d have been watching with my family, and my cheeks would have been aflame in any case). Let’s face it, when you’re a heterosexual male between the ages of thirteen and twenty, the sight of a double-decker bus can get your hormones in an uproar. For the last forty years, TV sex has represented nothing but a source of embarrassment, which occasionally tips over into genuine irritation and/or disgust.

For a start, I can’t help wondering whether the actors are as embarrassed as we all are. I hope they’ve brushed their teeth (especially if there’s prolonged face-chewing involved). Do his armpits pong? What’s he thinking of when he makes that weird face? Why is he wearing underpants in bed? Is that mole on his back cancerous? What a hairy bottom! If he keeps his stomach sucked in like that for much longer, he’ll do himself a mischief. What must their parents think? What – precisely – is this adding to the plot? Whatever happened to the concept of decorum? What do actors think when they read a script which means that their todger will be dangling in plain view in millions of sitting rooms around the country?  Are viewers in other European countries so relaxed about this sort of thing that they sit around saying things like, “Gosh! doesn’t he have a simply splendid penis, Granny!” or “I’m surprised she bothers wearing a bra, really” or “One day, my little angel, you’ll be able to do that with your private parts”?

But the overriding questions that keep going through my head are, “Is this actually meant to excite us?” and “Would this programme be better or worse if the sex acts were subtly suggested rather than, as it were, being rammed down our throats?” 

This sort of stuff’s been happening on our TV screens since the 1960s – and after the first flush of exuberance at being allowed to drag sex out of the cupboard (where, I suspect, it had really been quite happy until then), the mystery is why TV folk keep on doing it. For a start, the target audience – young men – won’t be watching an historical drama, that’s for sure. Besides, if they want titillation, they’ve always got the internet. Or real women. 

So, do programme-makers honestly believe that the largely married, middle-aged-to-elderly audience who actually watch this sort of stuff get a terrific thrill out of pseudo-pornography? Because we don’t – we really don’t. If anyone tells you otherwise, there’s either something wrong with them, or they’re trying to sound all relaxed and liberal and cool. If programme-makers think they’re treating us like adults, they’re not –they’re treating us as if we were all frustrated adolescents.

That leaves three possible motives. First, TV producers might get a personal thrill out of this stuff, but I doubt it – because, believe it or not, they aren’t that much different from the rest of us. They could, I suppose, believe it’s integral to the drama – but we all know that’s nonsense. They might, of course, still be fighting the battles of the 1960s and trying to get us all to be less buttoned-up about sex – but given the vast number of abortions carried out in this country every year and the steady rise in sexually-transmitted diseases, a more buttoned-up attitude towards the procreative act surely wouldn’t go amiss: whatever the problems currently afflicting our society, a surfeit of self-control isn’t amongst them. 

Or do they, in their silly, shallow, neurotic way, hope that it’ll create a marketing “buzz” around a programme that they don’t have that much faith in? Well, I’m sure if I stood in front of our house with my tackle on display that would also create a “buzz” (and, no doubt, some laughter), but that’s no excuse for doing it. Or, finally, could it be that it ensures that their peers in the creative community will think them “edgy”, “brave” and “subversive” – the three adjectives that sum up the tawdriness of our seedy, shameless culture?

And before anyone accuses me of being a prude and a hypocrite, don’t bother. Like the vast majority of people in Britain, I’ll happily own up to both. In fact, I’m dead relaxed about it - unless a stranger’s genitalia puts in a surprise appearance on my TV. I mean, for all they know, I could be eating.

I mentioned Midsomer Murders as an example of a programme where nothing overly mucky ever appears on screen. But, watching a few minutes of the last episode, we were treated to a prolonged rear-view of Barnaby’s assistant, DS Jones, taking a shower. When the producers of Midsomer Murders try to get edgy, you know things have gone too far.