The 30 Sexiest Shows Streaming on Netflix

If junky reality TV is your thing, you can’t do much better than the ridiculously entertaining Too Hot to Handle. Essentially Netflix’s answer to Love Island, it brings a cast of very-sexy-only contestants from around the world to an idyllic private Mexican location. Literally based on “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld, it’s hosted by a prudish virtual assistant named Lana who takes prize money away from them every time the cast members it on. Which is pretty much all the time.

Who knew chess could be this libidinous? While it’s short on actual sex, The Queen’s Gambit imparts Anya Taylor-Joy’s every match with the push and pull of a lustful tease. It doesn’t hurt that Taylor-Joy is a former model, or that her competitors are way too good-looking to be chess phenoms.

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Creator Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) assembled this anthology series following various Chicagoans as they figure out love, sex, and the chaos of modern life. It’s hit or miss, but there’s enough talent in the cast to keep it compelling. Don’t skip the threesome episode with Orlando Bloom, Malin Akerman, and Kate Micucci.

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Spike Lee has a reputation for densely political movies (the masterful BlacKkKlansman), but he doesn’t get enough credit for how damn hot his work can be. It goes back to his seminal She’s Gotta Have It (1986), which he’s turned into a Netflix series centered on a liberated Brooklyn woman navigating romance among three men

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Like father, like son takes on a new sordid meaning in this salacious limited series drama about a father who gets into an affair with his son’s fiancee, replete with sex scenes dripping in forbidden passion.

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Premium cable isn’t afraid of throwing a little (or a lot) of sex and nudity at the screen to keep you plugged to a drama show. A story about a Chicago family struggling with their alcoholic father (William H. Macy) may not seem like a likely candidate, but there’s plenty of titillation along the way.

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The sex appeal of Outlander is legendary at this point. The historical fantasy is as much about being transported back to brutal 1700s Scotland as it is about characters finding solace between the sheets.

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The Ultimatum: Queer Love is where couples who aren’t on the same page about the future of their relationships date other people to see if they’ll end up proposing to their original mate, and the sexual tension between two strangers who have been trapped in incompatible relationships is hot enough to burn a few unions.

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In classic CW fashion, everyone on Riverdale is preposterously good-looking. But the sort-of adaptation of the Archie comics is also worth viewing for the cool stylization and David Lynch-lite mystery.

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Netflix’s acclaimed comedy-drama mostly avoids the stereotypes of depictions of all-female prison life, but it doesn’t shy away from the sexual and romantic partnerships that inevitably occur inside those gray walls. (Even a male guard gets involved.)

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Like the movie that came before it, Justin Simien’s series looking at the lives of black students at an Ivy League college is sharp, funny, and rife with sexual politics and awakenings that veer from uncomfortable to charming.

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We should preface this by mentioning that this soapy thriller follows a sociopathic bookstore owner/serial killer who falls for a customer. It’s a dizzying, dark look at romantic obsession, and though our protagonist is hardly one to root for, Season 2 has its steamy moments.

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Judd Apatow’s Love explores male and female perspectives on the sometimes awkward act of modern courtship with real heart and laughs, and this being from Apatow, its fair share of sexual antics.

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Somehow the power-hungry DC players on House of Cards always find time for some (frequently naughty) trysts with people who they may or may not be using to get a leg up.

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This sharp-witted comedy from Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Neighbors) went underappreciated and was canceled after two seasons, but its portrait of the messy, romantically interconnected lives of 40-something Harvard alumni is worth another look.

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If you’ve seen Keri Russell in The Americans, you know she can mix world-shifting business with pleasure, and The Diplomat is no different. Her emotional throuple with British foreign secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) and her estranged (and just strange) Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), while being a placeholder United States ambassador to the United Kingdom herself is steamy enough to make the main plot about intercontinental terrorism feel like a subplot.

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No show was streamed more in 2023 than the one about devastatingly good-looking lawyers and paralegals who hook up everywhere from penthouses to the mail room in between winning cases and hiding the fact one of them lied about going to Harvard Law School. Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) could charm the underwear off of people who hate him (and did in many episodes), and every scene Megan Markle is in as Rachel is a treat for the eyes.

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It feels weird calling one of HBO’s best comedy series ever one of the sexiest shows on Netflix, but Insecure continues to break barriers the way it did for showcasing Black women’s sexual agency (and perseverance in the face of unexpected ejaculation) when it first came out. We get to watch Issa the character and Issa the real person grow into their sexy over five seasons with a roster of hunks that would make any boyfriend of hers feel…insecure.

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This heartbreaking South African series by Steven Pillemer follows a married couple going through a stagnant spell who have their tawdry and lethal secrets unearthed by one another when the wife, Nandi Mahlati (Kgomotso Christopher), cheats on her husband, Judge Leonard Mahlathi (Thapelo Mokoena) with a mysterious boy toy.

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“Gory, sexy, and ludicrous,” as Vanity Fair put it, The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as said witcher, a magical monster hunter who makes time for hot and heavy bedding of a quarter-elf sorceress (Anya Chalotra)… in case that’s your kind of kink.

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