In 1998, a pay-cable network called HBO took a gamble on a show about four New York women in their thirties who talked about sex the way men in locker rooms talked about box scores. The result was Sex and the City , a series that didn’t just feature sex scenes—it weaponized them as narrative tools, cultural critiques, and, occasionally, comic relief.

The show’s sex scenes were rarely romantic in the traditional sense. They were awkward, athletic, noisy, and often hilariously unflattering. Director of photography Michael Spiller once noted that the lighting for these scenes was deliberately flat and unglamorous. “We wanted it to feel like you were peeking into someone’s actual apartment, not a perfume ad,” he said.

The sex scenes themselves, however, have mostly held up as authentic. Unlike the airbrushed, weightless intimacy of a Netflix romantic drama, SATC ’s sex was sweaty, noisy, and often concluded with a woman faking it just to get some sleep. Today, every HBO sex scene comes with an intimacy coordinator, a therapist, and a closed set. SATC had none of that. The actors, particularly Cattrall and Parker, often improvised the physical comedy. The famous scene where Samantha falls off a mechanical horse during a sexual mishap was entirely improvised after the prop malfunctioned.