Last Valentine’s Day, the women of InsideHook rounded up what we consider to be the sexiest movie scenes of all time. But maybe you’ve already exhausted all of those options, or perhaps you’re not too thrilled about sitting through a two-hour movie before you get to those traditional V-Day festivities. Maybe a single episode of TV is more your speed — something to have on in the background while you put the finishing touches on that romantic home-cooked dinner you have planned. (You do have something planned, right?)
With that in mind, I asked the women of InsideHook to name the sexiest TV scenes of all time. (As you might expect, our picks include a lot of Heated Rivalry. Just let us have this.) To be clear, these aren’t all sex scenes — sometimes a passionate kiss or even a situation where there’s no actual touching but the sexual tension is too much to bear can be just as impactful, especially when it’s something that’s been built up and teased over multiple seasons.
So without further ado, we present the sexiest TV scenes of all time, in no particular order, according to InsideHook’s female staffers. May they serve as inspiration.
New Girl, Nick and Jess’s First Kiss
What happens in this scene is a first kiss between two characters that defies the standard of any first kiss. It should be memorialized in history books. No first kiss in a TV series could ever compare to what happens between roommates Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) and Jessica Day (Zooey Deschanel).
After a two-season build-up of a very close friendship, the tension between these two hits a peak as they participate in a game with their friends that ultimately leads them to being challenged to kiss. They fail — Nick screams that he doesn’t want his first kiss with Jess to be “like this” — and much later in the night, once everyone has gone to bed, they run into each other in the hallway of their apartment and engage in the most passionate and desperate kiss that’s ever existed. “I meant something like that,” he says to her after. I watched this series for the first time over 10 years ago, and I’m swooning all over again. — Joanna Sommer, Editorial Assistant
Bridgerton Season 1, Honeymoon Montage
Years before Heated Rivalry took up the mantle of the horniest show on TV, Bridgerton made us all clutch our pearls over some Regency-era romance. Like all period pieces set in that time, it starts off fairly chaste, with a lot of stolen glances and angsty yearning. But when Simon (Regé-Jean Page) and Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) finally get together, they really get together, and episode 6 features a montage of them on their honeymoon having sex in basically every room of their mansion (and once outside their mansion in the rain). It’s all very memorable, but the part that always sticks out to me is when they go at it while Daphne’s standing on a ladder in their library while the delighted maids listen in through the door. — Bonnie Stiernberg, Managing Editor
Outlander, Claire and Jamie’s Wedding Night
Outlander was one of the first shows I can remember getting into specifically for the sex. Think you’re not into time travel? You will be. The gist: Claire, a married WWII nurse played by Caitriona Balfe, is suddenly thrust back in time to the 18th-century Scottish Highlands, where she meets Sam Heughan’s Jamie Fraser and pretty quickly falls for him. Circumstances force them into marriage, and they spend most of their wedding night talking…until they don’t! The kicker is that Jamie is meant to be a virgin (it is the 1740s, after all), but he’s, let’s just say, an exceptionally capable one. The show uses that moment to set the tone for what follows: seven seasons’ worth of horny, slow-burn Highlander sex. — Lindsay Rogers, Travel Editor
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Sex and the City, Big Dropping Carrie Off
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Abso-fuckin-lutely.”
There’s no kissing, no steamy sex in the scene where Mr. Big offers Carrie a ride home when she can’t hail a cab. But there is restraint. The flirty car scene hums with banter and curiosity, the thrill of push-and-pull. It’s the exact magnetism that will shape (er, haunt) their relationship for the next six seasons.
In the pivotal pilot, Big and Carrie have just met earlier in the episode. Now in his chauffeur-driven car, they flirt with the ease of two people who know they’ve already made an impression. Jazzy trumpets and a smooth piano pulse as Carrie steps out then pauses. Big delivers a slow, knowing smirk before driving away. He leaves her wanting more and she lets him, just as the series goes. — Zoe de Leon, Social Media Editor
Nobody Wants This, Joanne and Noah’s First Kiss
Nobody could have predicted when Nobody Wants This first premiered in 2024 that it’d be such a critically acclaimed hit — one that led to Emmy nominations for both Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, no less — but much of that success can be traced back to this very memorable kiss in the show’s second episode. After a bunch of flirting and a mutual decision that the two are just friends, Joanne points out how they have never kissed, and when Noah responds that he’s “very aware we haven’t kissed yet” (Yet!), she suggests that they maybe should try it out just once. That’s all Noah needs to hear, and he takes charge, instructing her to hand him her ice cream and put her bag down with a confident authority that is, frankly, extremely hot. He lays one on her, and just like that, they’re not just friends anymore. — Bonnie Stiernberg
The Hunting Wives, Sophie and Margo’s Hookup
At the recommendation of a co-worker and fellow Hot TV Sex contributor, I queued up The Hunting Wives while my fiancé was in San Francisco on a week-long work trip. I assumed it would last me the full week. Reader, I demolished it in two nights. From the jump, you know exactly where things are headed, which only makes the lead up to Sophie (Brittany Snow) and Margo’s (Malin Åkerman) hookup in episode 4 that much more satisfying. Two smoking-hot women in an illicit entanglement? Say less. — Lindsay Rogers
Cheers, Sam and Diane’s First Kiss
There’s a reason that enemies-to-lovers is such a popular romance trope; there’s passion behind both love and hate, and oftentimes the two eventually bleed into each other. For an entire season, Cheers tortured us with a will-they-won’t-they arc that saw Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane (Shelley Long) alternating between bickering and flirting, before an explosive fight in the season 1 finale — one in which an exasperated Sam tells Diane he’s going to “bounce you off of every wall of this office” — eventually leads to their much-anticipated first kiss. — Bonnie Stiernberg
The entirety of Heated Rivalry
There was no question among the women at InsideHook that Heated Rivalry would make it onto this list. (As one editor mused, “How many Heated Rivalry scenes do you guys think we can get away with including?”) If we could list every sexy moment between hockey rivals Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), believe us, we would. The other women may disagree, but I’m pleading my case for the stairwell kiss in episode 2. It’s implied at the start of the episode that our two protagonists have been texting each other for months after hooking up for the first time in episode 1, but they have not been physically together since (aside from playing against each other on the ice). This leads us to a crucial moment for Hollander and Rozanov: the first time they have actual sex with each other. That momentous scene is a beautifully shot sequence set to “It’s You” by Peter Peter. It’s sexy, intimate and romantic. However, the scene that follows is perhaps my favorite in the entire series. Afterwards, Shane and Ilya are talking in the stairwell of Shane’s apartment as Ilya waits for his cab. Before leaving, he bends over to Shane, who is sitting on the stairwell hugging Ilya’s jacket, and whispers something as he intently stares at Shane’s lips. They both ever so slowly, almost teasingly, lean into each other for a kiss. As their lips touch, Ilya pulls back almost immediately, then goes back in for a second. It’s the most tender kiss of the whole show. So tender that producers thought the moment was “too sweet,” but creator Jacob Tierney fought to keep it in (thank you, Jacob!). Ilya takes his jacket and says goodbye to a soft-smiling Shane, who watches him leave. We hear the door shut, then Shane closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. To viewers, this is a slight turning point in their relationship. While a brief moment, the affectionate kiss and Shane’s contentedness afterwards (all credit to Williams’s brilliant microexpressions) communicate to viewers that this relationship might be more than just sex. We also know, with these two, that we have a long, long burn ahead. — Logan Mahan, Commerce Editor
How does one pick the hottest scene in all of Heated Rivalry? It’s nearly impossible, yet there’s one scene I keep coming back to: their first kiss. Ilya is invited into Shane’s hotel room, and while they awkwardly make small talk, Ilya confidently yet so casually circles the room around Shane, sneakily pinning him to the wall in the process. It’s a perfectly hot but tender moment that foreshadows the dynamic these two explore throughout the next several episodes: Ilya’s dominance and Shane’s awkwardness that blends into sheer need for one another — with bits of more intimate moments seeping in. I relish how blissfully spoiled I felt watching it then. If only I knew how much more there was to come. — Joanna Sommer
It’s kind of crazy to think that a scene involving a tuna melt could qualify as one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen on TV, but it’s really what happens after Ilya awkwardly prepares said melt for Shane after convincing him to stay and hang out at his house post-hookup that’s most consequential: As the two are casually watching a hockey game on his couch and chatting — and, maybe, admitting to themselves for the first time that they’re interested in building more than just a physical relationship — Ilya pulls Shane in for some cuddles and Shane tenderly rests his head on Ilya’s chest for a while before…uh, resting it somewhere else. Things escalate into what Williams so eloquently described as “double-jerking,” but what sets this apart from other sex scenes is that it’s Shane taking the lead while Ilya kind of sits back in awe of him. Sure, it’s nice to watch them pant into each other’s faces for a while, but the hottest part of the scene is the emotional intimacy that comes when, in the heat of the moment, they call each other by their first names for the first time. It may sound like a small thing, but it’s really the turning point in the series, when both men first realize they’ve caught feelings and want something more. — Bonnie Stiernberg
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