‘I’m going to declare this an area of outstanding natural beauty,” a moustachioed Danny Dyer (wearing a terrible 80s wig) tells Katherine Parkinson while pouring champagne over her naked breasts in a field. He licks it off, eagerly performs cunnilingus and they romp in the sun.
Rivals was a series packed with sex, longing stares and naked tennis, but this was the unexpected moment that made the nation swoon the most.
That’s because, ever since meeting at a buffet in episode one, sneaking potatoes and booze together, sparks flew between Freddie (Dyer) and Lizzie (Parkinson). He buys her a typewriter so she can write erotic novels. They enjoy a drunken first-class train ride with homemade cake. Then, after a whole series of Lizzie also being fat-shamed and ignored by her husband, Freddie tells her: “Have you got any idea how beautiful you fucking are?” No wonder the champagne popped moments later.
This wasn’t the first time we all went weak at the knees this year, though. At a time when the bleak state of dating has become a national crisis, and the loss of community and connection has led to a rise in loneliness, TV has granted us an abundance of ideal romances that we crave and deserve.
Rewind to the start of the year, when all this swooning started with the arrival of One Day. Set over two decades, and 18 episodes, Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter’s (Leo Woodall) romance is one hell of a slow-burn, with a dizzying amount of will-they-won’t-they moments. On the night they meet, at their graduation party, we didn’t want the night to end just as much as they clearly didn’t. When Emma spots Dexter’s bare bum in the shower, we felt her excruciating frustration and blushed.
But it is the wedding maze scene that really made us long for them to make it: “I missed you,” Em tells him after learning he is getting married and having a baby. “I thought maybe I’d got you back … my best friend.” They can’t help but give in to a tiny yet mighty kiss.
Unsurprisingly, that scene was part of the chemistry read between the two actors. “It’s a moment of them saying that they love each other, but that they are going in different directions,” said Woodall.
There was barely enough time to wipe away the tears before the next big romance worth rooting for: which came in the unlikely form of John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) and Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) in historical Japanese epic Shōgun.
Mariko is a dutiful translator for prisoner John and despite clashing over cultures and ideals, the two come to hugely respect and learn from each other. But things got steamy in a night-time hot spring scene. “I am happy to see you have changed your mind about bathing,” Mariko smiles, before sitting down with her back turned to him and asking about his life, while cautiously revealing more about her own.
“I think that sometimes it’s a little bit more intimate when you’re not looking at the person,” Sawai said of the moment. “You’re just feeling the presence of the person and kind of dreaming about a world in which they’re not in. That’s where the romance, kind of, I think, sparks.”
They do finally have sex (or “pillow” as Mariko says) but the most romantic gesture is also the most morbid: John volunteers to second her when she chooses to kill herself out of shame (that is, chop off her head to make sure she’s dead). Alas, he doesn’t need to do it in the end – but that’s real love.
For a satisfyingly sexy and happy ending, though, look to Bridgerton’s third season and its six-minute sex scene. Fans of the poppy period drama had to get out the smelling salts to recover after Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) got it on.
Colin had saved Penelope from a hot air balloon accident. He announced their engagement. He even stood up to her awful mother. They then went to their new home, he twirled her around to see her reflection in the mirror and said: “You are the cleverest, bravest woman I’ve ever known … Then there’s the way your hair cascades down your shoulder, the way your eyes shine when you look at me.” But just before that all got a bit too vomit-inducing, he shifted gear by undressing her corset and telling her: “Lie down.”
They have very nice, slow sex on a chaise longe and there is a lot of talking and assurances. This might sound a bit boring but it isn’t. It is lovely. Plus he gives her her first orgasm. “It was perfect,” she gasps. “Can we do it again?”
It’s sexier still, knowing how much Coughlan loves the scene: “I was like, when I’m 80, I’m gonna look back and be like, ‘My boobs look great! They’re all my own and they’re sitting up there. No regrets.’”
Not all great loves are packaged so prettily, though – romance can be found in a hopeless place like the Northern Ireland police force too, as Blue Lights proved with Stevie (Martin McCann) and Grace (Siân Brooke). Fans had been urging the pair to get together ever since they started swapping and critiquing packed lunches while out on the beat together last year.
In this year’s second season, however, Grace put a stop to things as she didn’t want a relationship to interfere with their work. But true love cannot be denied – all it takes is a wee boy with a gun to shoot at them both for them to realise this. After surviving, they join their colleagues at the pub and the band are playing Dolly Parton’s Light of a Clear Blue Morning. When Stevie calls it a night, Graces runs after him. “Did I forget something?” he asks. “Yeah, I think so. Yeah,” she replies. They get in the taxi, she rests her head on his shoulder, and they go back to his for sandwiches. Probably.
Yet more swooning was to come – and this time it was mostly felt by millennials who had grown up wishing The OC’s emo kid Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) was their boyfriend. Brody made his big return as “hot rabbi” Noah in Nobody Wants This, opposite Kristen Bell’s sex podcaster Joanna.
It spoke to anybody who has dated over the last decade, as they navigated everything that comes with a modern new relationship – the most relatable being The Ick episode. Joanna blames Noah’s eagerness to impress her parents and his sport coat for giving her the ick. His response? He calls her out for self-sabotaging and says: “I’m on your side, I can handle you.”
A man who can talk himself out of the ick is basically a millennial dater’s Prince Charming with the glass slipper, yet amazingly the scene was inspired by a real relationship. Creator Erin Foster said it happened with her husband (the whole series is loosely based on them): “When you’re a woman who has always picked toxic partners and always been in bad relationships, when you’re finally presented with someone who’s, like, kind and loving and sees you, you can panic a little bit and freak out and think, ‘Oh, shit, this really small, dumb thing is going to be the reason why I don’t like this person any more’.”
It didn’t stop there. There was the added issue of Joanna not being Jewish. It looked like the pair called it quits when she realised she’d have to convert in order to continue dating a head rabbi. She leaves the season finale’s barmitzvah on a bus, gets off, the bus pulls away …. AND THERE HE IS: “You’re right, I can’t have both,” he says, before one hell of a kiss. We need season two, now.
Splash some cold water on your face and get a hold of yourself, because this year’s love-in isn’t over just yet. On Boxing Day, escapist romcom The Road Trip will have you aching to know why Addie (Emma Appleton) and Dylan (Laurie Davidson) broke up two years earlier, and whether they’ll lock lips again and reunite as they reluctantly drive around Spain together trying to get to a wedding.
To echo the words of Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw: “I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.” Here’s to plenty more shows that are making that love happen.
