The BBC’s new drama Normal People has shocked viewers with the amount of sex and nudity shown.
Across the twelve half-hour episodes, 41 minutes of “sex, kissing or foreplay” is shown – twelve per cent of its total running time. Eleven minutes takes place in the second episode alone.
Game of Thrones – infamous for its frequent use of nudity and the graphic nature of its sex scenes contained a reported 30 minutes across its first four seasons.
‘Excessive and graphic’
Normal People centres on a teenage couple at school in Ireland. But the amount of on-screen sex eclipses previous controversial BBC dramas Versailles – branded “primetime pornography” – and Wanderlust, which Mediawatch-UK said was “nothing more than soft porn dressed up as a mid-life crisis”.
The sex and nudity content of the new BBC Three programme is described as ‘Severe’ on IMDb’s Parent’s Guide.
excessive and graphic
It says: “Most episodes have sex scenes which last for several minutes where some form of male and female nudity is shown”, adding that there is “full frontal male and female nudity” and described the sex scenes as “excessive and graphic”.
Explicit
Viewers in Ireland complained to RTÉ Radio 1’s talk show Liveline about the explicit nature of the prime-time programme.
One caller said: “I wouldn’t like a daughter of mine to be engaging in sexual promiscuity before she gets married, I think most parents wouldn’t. It’s morally wrong, it’s fornication.”
Others said the programme normalised the idea of “kids going to school and having sexual relations” and that the scenes were “something you’d expect to see in a porno movie” and “certainly not for family viewing”.
Also see:
Dame June Whitfield criticises sex and swearing on TV in final interview
Zoë Wanamaker says too much TV is ‘violent and nasty’