After the demands of watching “Game of Thrones” (even pronouncing the names of characters wore us out), we sure are ready for some steamy summer entertainment.
“Masters of Sex,” July 13, 10 p.m., Showtime
Synopsis: Can a scientist also be a stud? That was the question posed — and answered, in great detail — last summer when Showtime’s “Masters of Sex” premiered. True story: He was the uptight sex researcher at a Midwestern college; she was his secretary and later his research assistant. But Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) gave the word “research” a new, intimate, scandalous meaning. In their study on human sexual response, they were observers who later became participants, copulating for hours and measuring how long it took them to achieve orgasm together — or alone.
Turn up the heat: A funny thing happened on the way to the clinic. Masters fell for Johnson, a single mother of two who knew how to wear a pencil skirt. In real life, Masters left his wife for Johnson, but in the show we’re not there yet. As Season 2 begins, Masters’ wife Libby (Caitlin FitzGerald) has just given birth to their first child while Masters is booking hotel rooms where he and his favorite subject continue their, well, research.
Temperature: 120 degrees. Fill the tub with ice cubes. It’s burning up out there!
“Reckless,” June 29, 9 p.m., CBS
Synopsis: Traditional soap-opera lovers will have their traditional needs met with “Reckless,” a potboiler set in sultry Charleston, S.C. Although it walks and talks like a legal drama (John Grisham lite), the promise of sex is suggested in every scene, from the way the show’s gorgeous Yankee litigator (Anna Wood) bends over, to the way its hunky good ol’ boy lawyer (Cam Gigandet) wears his jeans slung down at tool-belt level.
Turn up the heat: The actual sex on display involves role-play, headlights, outdoor scenarios and a video camera — can this show really be on CBS? — as corrupt detective Terry McCandless (Shawn Hatosy) plays sex games with Lee Anne Marcus (Georgina Haig), a naive junior cop who is punished for her lustful urges like many women in TV dramas. If you’d rather not dwell on that, the sleaze factor of lots of cops — including Adam Rodriguez (“Magic Mike”) — stripping for the video camera may make you feel completely “Reckless.”
Temperature: 89 degrees. A cold compress and some ginger ale will help us survive this spell.
“Ray Donovan,” July 13, 9 p.m., Showtime
Synopsis: Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) is a Boston-born, LA-based fixer. Meaning when powerful people and celebrities do ridiculous and illegal things, he makes them go away. He is the son of a career criminal, Mickey (Jon Voight), and the brother to two men (Dash Mihok, Eddie Marsan) who suffer from a serious case of arrested development. At home, Ray has a Carmela Sopranolike wife, Abby (Paula Malcomson), and two Meadow- and A.J.-like children.
Turn up the heat: Between Season 1’s murders, beatings and scenes of torture, there was time for some conscious coupling. Mickey tried to force a woman to have sex with him by holding a gun to her head; Ray handcuffed a Britney wannabe to a bathroom sink drawer. Season 2 kicks off with Ray and Abby getting hot and heavy, and one of Ray’s clients, a pro athlete named Deonte (Mo McRae), getting into another sexcapade that Ray must make disappear.
Temperature: 85 degree. In LA, sex and sleaze go together like peanut butter and jelly.
“The Bridge,” July 9, 10 p.m., FX
Synopsis: A gritty crime drama playing out across the hot and dusty border of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, “The Bridge” has many intriguing elements that lend spice to what has been, so far, a procedural involving a Mexican detective (Demian Bichir) and an American cop with Asperger’s syndrome (Diane Kruger).
Turn up the heat: With his raspy voice and dark eyes, Oscar nominee Bichir radiates a wounded sensual magnetism. As American detective Sonya Cross, Kruger has impromptu sex with the brother of the man who killed her sister. Kinky! The show’s scenes of violence — someone loses an ear in Episode 1 — are truly menacing, but won’t make you puke.
Temperature: 90 degrees. Turn up the air conditioning and close the blinds.
“Tyrant,” June 26, 10 p.m., FX
Synopsis: California pediatrician Bassam “Barry” Al Fayeed (Adam Rayner) reluctantly returns home to the Middle Eastern country he left as a teenager to attend the wedding of his nephew.
Turn up the heat: Before the wedding, the men from the palace where Barry grew up repair to the sauna for a shave and some light cruising (between Barry’s son Sammy, played by Noah Silver, and the son of a government employee). Barry tries to broker peace when his insane brother Jamal (Ashraf Barhom) nearly kills another man in a naked steam-room fight. That devil Jamal also pays regular visits to a local woman for extramarital sex.
Temperature: 110 degrees. The sauna always makes us sweat.
“True Blood,” June 22, 9 p.m., HBO
Synopsis: No one’s clothes stay on for very long on this long-running show about Bon Temps, La., a bayou backwater overrun by vampy vampires. And this season, the show’s last, seems determined to go out with a bang. First, there’s an attack at a vampire-human mixer. One of the show’s major characters dies and several ancillary characters are kidnapped.
Turn up the heat: “True Blood” has always been the kind of show where, if you can stand all the violence and dripping mouths, the reward is a kinky sex scene, and Episode 1 does not disappoint. When Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) feels his masculinity threatened by Violet (Karolina Wydra), he pulls his cop car over to the side of the road and throws her against the hood for a rough ride. Other moments include a game of Russian roulette set in Morocco, where vampire Pam Swynford De Beaufort (Kristin Bauer van Straten) says to her challenger, “I’ll be having a three-way in hell with the devil.”
Temperature: 90 degrees. Too hot and wet to sleep.
“The Leftovers,” June 29, 10 p.m., HBO
Synopsis: In this 9/11 allegory, the residents of a small town face a world where 140 million people have disappeared without explanation. The residents of Mapleton, NY, including Police Chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) and his family, try to carry on bravely, even though they are haunted by a group of survivors called the Guilty Remnant.
Turn up the heat: Jill Garvey (Margaret Qualley), Kevin’s teenage daughter, is your typical jaded TV teenager. She amuses herself by playing a postapocalyptic version of Spin the Bottle, where the game instructs its players to engage in contact as innocent as a “hug” and as graphic as “choke” and “f – – k.” Let’s just say no one abstains.
Temperature: 80 degrees. Sex ain’t no fun after the apocalypse.
“Outlander,” Aug. 9, 9 p.m., Starz
Synopsis: Married World War II combat nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) is mysteriously and suddenly swept back in time from 1945 to 1743. She doesn’t get a chance to leave a note for her husband: “Be back in a few hundred years”?
Turn up the heat: Poor Claire is forced to marry Jamie (Sam Heughan), a hunky Scottish warrior with insatiable appetites. Well, having an affair with him beats sewing tapestries and playing the spinet.
Temperature: 100 degrees. Can we say bodice-ripper?