Curator Watchlist
A smart, adult character drama that uses a provocative premise to explore intimacy, ambition, and the social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s. It’s strongest when it balances the clinical and the personal, with sharp performances and a thoughtful look at how private lives collide with public change.
Where to watch: Buy
Sun
Created by: Michelle Ashford
Starring: Michael Sheen, Lizzy Caplan, Caitlin FitzGerald
William Masters and Virginia Johnson are real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a midwestern teaching hospital to the cover of Time magazine and multiple appearances on Johnny Carson's couch. He is a brilliant scientist out of touch with his own feelings, and she is a single working mother ahead of her time. The series chronicles their unusual lives, romance, and unlikely pop culture trajectory.
Michelle Ashford
Michael Sheen, Lizzy Caplan, Caitlin FitzGerald, Annaleigh Ashford
A smart, adult character drama that uses a provocative premise to explore intimacy, ambition, and the social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s. It’s strongest when it balances the clinical and the personal, with sharp performances and a thoughtful look at how private lives collide with public change.
Masters of Sex is a polished, intelligent drama that treats its subject with more nuance than its premise might suggest. Rather than simply leaning on shock value, it uses the work of Masters and Johnson as a lens on desire, repression, gender, and the changing language of modern intimacy.
Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan give the series its center, playing two people who are brilliant in different ways and often emotionally opaque to themselves and each other. The supporting cast adds texture, and the show’s period detail is consistently strong, making the hospital, home, and media worlds feel lived-in and specific.
Its reputation is a little uneven because the later stretch is less consistently sharp than the early seasons, but the first two seasons in particular are well worth the time. For viewers who like thoughtful, adult cable drama with a historical frame, it remains an easy recommendation.
A similarly elegant period drama about desire, identity, and social change, with meticulous style and a slow-burn character focus.
An adult relationship drama that dissects intimacy, memory, and emotional fallout with a similarly serious, literary tone.
Another David Simon-era prestige series about sex, commerce, and changing American culture, with strong period atmosphere.
A provocative, character-centered drama about private life, sexuality, and social norms, with a comparable mix of domestic and cultural tension.
For viewers who appreciate quiet, emotionally precise drama and deeply interior characters, even though the subject matter is very different.
A smart, adult period drama about medicine, ambition, and institutional power, with a similarly serious historical sensibility.
A top-tier prestige drama from the same era, built on complicated marriage dynamics, secrecy, and emotional restraint.
A sleek, adult biographical drama that follows a cultural figure through ambition, reinvention, and the costs of success.
A character-rich HBO drama about family, mortality, and emotional repression, with the same interest in private lives under pressure.
A frank, relationship-focused drama that examines sex and intimacy with unusual directness and psychological realism.
For viewers who like prestige production values and ensemble drama, though it’s more war epic than intimate character study.
A relationship-driven series centered on sexuality, identity, and changing social norms, with a similarly adult perspective.
sexuality, intimacy, gender roles, marriage, ambition, science, historical change, workplace politics
prestige drama, historical drama, adult relationships, psychological drama, period piece, sexual politics, 1960s, 1970s, character-driven, cable series