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The 10 hottest, wildest, gayest TV moments of 2022 – Queerty

Kim Martel
Image Credits, left to right: ‘The Boys’ (Amazon), ‘Queer As Folk’ (Peacock), ‘Interview With The Vampire’ (AMC), ‘Minx’ (HBO Max)

We’re really living in the era of equal-opportunity nudity on television. As articles from the likes of Vanity Fair and Vogue have noted, there are more penises on TV than ever before… and that’s just the tip!

It’s felt like every major adult-focused series—especially those on premium channels and streaming, where regulations are much more lax—has offered up at least one show-stopping moment with bodies on full display. We’ve seen butts and bulges, poles and pubes, orgies and orifices, and even the inside of a penis. So, yeah, TV really went all out this year.

As 2022 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to appreciate all that the medium has to offer, reflecting on 10 unforgettable scenes of sex and nudity from the past 12 months. They may not all be explicitly gay (or even “explicit,” for that matter), but they have a lot to offer to anyone who considers themselves a fan of the male form.

Whether they’re meant to titillate us, make us laugh, gasp, or cover our eyes in terror, these are the scenes we’ve been talking about all year long.

1. Minx delivered a full-frontal montage

Image Credit: ‘Minx,’ HBO

Good ‘ole reliable HBO declared it “The Year of The D*ck” just a few months into 2022 with the arrival of Minx, an addicting period dramedy all about the creation of the first erotic magazine for women. There’s some meta-commentary to the show’s whole “ladies get lusty, too” angle, as Minx offered up plenty of man candy for its own female viewership—not to mention the gays and theys who also appreciate a package. Just twenty minutes into the series’ premiere, the magazine staff surveys a slew of male models, stripped completely bare, and we’re treated to schlong after schlong in a provocative montage that offers an eyeful of all shapes, colors, and sizes. It’s kind of beautiful, honestly!

HBO. From “Not like a shvantz right in the face” (Season 1, Episode 1) – Premiere Date: March 17.

Related: 5 more shows to stream that feature full-frontal male nudity

2. The Time-Traveler’s Wife’s BJ scene broke our brains

Image Credit: ‘The Time-Traveler’s Wife,’ HBO

Theo James (you’ll read that name again later) stars in this literary adaptation from Steven Moffat (Doctor Who), about a man with a disorder that occasionally sends him traveling through time. The heady series brings up many questions about the concept of free will and the moral implications of time travel, like: “What happens when a horny, curious teen meets an equally horny, curious teen version of himself from a different time?” Actually, the answer to that one’s pretty simple: He’d blow himself! We actually can’t believe the show had the balls to pull this one off, but boy did they (with actor Brian Altemus pulling double duty). Gay Twitter™ was in shambles for days after the episode aired.

HBO. From “Episode Two” – Premiere Date: May 22.

3. The Boys made sure we’ll never look at Ant-Man the same way again 

Image Credit: ‘The Boys,’ Amazon Prime Video

Fair warning: This one’s not for the faint of heart. Or the ticklish. The Boys is a bawdy comic book adaptation that’s delighted in exploring what our world would really be like if superheroes existed, to extreme ends. The series has never skimped on the sex and violence, but nothing could prepare fans for the introduction of Termite (Brett Geddes), a “Supe” who can shrink down to microscopic size. While partying it up, his sexual partner commands, “I want you inside me!”—a request that Termite takes literally. So, he shrinks himself and then crawls right up into the guy’s urethra. The only problem is, he’s got to sneeze, and when he lets it out, he instantly blows up back to size. Emphasis on the “blows up”… Yikes.

Amazon Prime Video. From “Payback” (Season 3, Episode 1) – Premiere Date: June 3.

Related: ‘The Boys’ promised a truly over-the-top group sex scene, and boy, did it deliver

4. Queer As Folk‘s reboot opened with double the penetration

Image Credit: ‘Queer As Folk,’ Peacock

For many gays, the original run of Queer As Folk—and its American counterpart—was foundational viewing, largely thanks to its liberal (and still extremely rare) usage of gay sex scenes and male nudity. So, when it was announced that Peacock would be rebooting the series with a much more inclusive queer cast, some viewers wondered if these Folk would remain just as gratuitous. Well, there was no need to worry, because this update opened with series lead Brodie (Devin Way) going to town on someone (with a cheeky nod to the old QAF). Then, before the first commercial break, we’re treated to yet another sex scene, with hunk Daddius (Chris Renfro) topping Noah (Johnny Sibilly). Queer As Folk 3.0, you were gone too soon!

Peacock. From “Babylon” (Episode 1) – Premiere Date: June 9.

Related: 7 surprising and somewhat problematic observations I made rewatching Season 1 of ‘Queer As Folk’

5. That time the History Channel got homoerotic

Image Credit: ‘Colosseum,’ The History Channel

Really and truly, the homoerotic television event of the summer was on the History Channel. Now, we’re guessing the network didn’t intend for Colosseum—its eight-part docuseries about the gladiators of the Roman empire—to be this darn sexy, but sexy is what they delivered! Ancient himbo versus ancient himbo, wearing little more than (historically accurate, we presume) leather jockstraps, slamming their big, brawny bodies against one another; what’s not to love? As we learned in the first episode, these gladiators were basically the sex symbols of their time, effectively giving us permission to feel all hot and bothered while watching, hundreds of years later (And, see! We weren’t just watching on “mute”—we actually paid attention!)

History Channel. Colosseum – Season Premiere Date: July 17.

Related: We need to talk about all the super homoerotic stuff happening on The History Channel’s YouTube page

6. Interview With The Vampire gave us a full-on gay fang-bang

Image Credit: ‘Interview With The Vampire,’ AMC

It’s easy to complain about our current culture of remakes, recycling the same stories over and over again, but it’s hard to be too mad when it results in a show like AMC’s Interview With The Vampire. By once again adapting Anne Rice’s best-selling novel but bringing the queer subtext to the forefront (something the Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt movie from ’94 only hinted at), this version made a case for itself hard and fast. In its premiere, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) lunge at each other with an animal-like intensity, and their first big sex scene is a hot one, fangs and all. By the time they’re levitating off the ground together, mid-coitus, we found ourselves ditching the garlic and wondering when it was our turn for a bite.

AMC. From “In Throes of Increasing Wonder…” (Season 1, Episode 1) – Premiere Date: October 2.

Related: Let’s talk about the demon twink introduced in the season finale of ‘Interview With The Vampire’

7. Russell Tovey touched tongues with a straight American Horror Story co-star

Image Credit: ‘American Horror Story: NYC,’ FX/Hulu

This really was the gayest season of AHS yet (and that’s saying something!), taking us back to 1980s New York City for a solemn but no less thrilling extended metaphor about the impact of the AIDS epidemic on a queer community that was only just beginning to step out of the shadows. There was a beefy leather-clad killer, multiple trips to Fire Island, and loads of gay-on-gay action, but we’re singling out this moment because of what we learned went down behind the scenes: While filming a steamy makeout, cutie Russell Tovey shared that his straight co-star (Zach Meiser) accidentally slipped him some tongue—and they only got more into it from there! Knowing the actors were so committed to the realism only makes the scene ever hotter.

FX/Hulu. From “Smoke Signals” (Season 11, Episode 3) – Premiere Date: October 26.

8. Elite delivered the sexy—and the sweet

Image Credit: ‘Elite,’ Netflix

We must’ve been extra good this year because we were spoiled with not one but two full seasons of Netflix’s extremely horny Spanish-language series, Elite, the show where basically every character is played by a model. Obviously, we have a huge soft spot for gays Patrick (Manu Ríos) and Iván (André Lamoglia), whose on-again-off-again relationship takes up a significant portion of the most recent season—as well as an awful lot of real estate in our minds. In one of their standout scenes, Iván is throwing a grief orgy after [redacted], having his way with some random partygoer. But, when Patrick shows up, he and Iván share a passionate kiss that makes us think maybe these two really are endgame? Swoon!

Netflix. From “Tina” (Season 6, Episode 6) – Season Premiere Date: November 18.

Related: Manu Ríos is ‘Elite’s’ breakout star, but there’s so much more to this Spanish sex bomb

9. The White Lotus: Sicily had us crying, “Uncle!”

Image Credit: ‘The White Lotus: Sicily,’ HBO

Back at the start of The White Lotus‘ buzzy second season, the internet was all aflutter over Theo James and his prosthetic schlong. But that moment almost feels quaint compared to some of the wild places Sicily wound up taking us, getting progressively gayer and gayer with each successive episode. Of course, no scene was more eyebrow-raising than the one that capped off episode five, in which Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) stumbles upon Quentin (Tom Hollander) getting railed by—who we’re lead to believe is—his own “naughty nephew,” Jack (Leo Woodall). It was a true shock to the senses. Somehow, the HBO satire topped its own salad-tossing moment from the first season—and we do mean “topped,” literally.

HBO. From “That’s Amore” (Season 2, Episode 5) – Premiere Date: November 27.

Related: ‘The White Lotus: Sicily’ goes full frontal, introduces us to Niccoló and his giant… pupils

10. Murray Bartlett booty-bounced on two different shows, became the king of TV 

Image Credits, left to right: ‘Physical’ (AppleTV+), ‘Welcome To Chippendales (Hulu)

Speaking of The White Lotus, gay Australian actor Murray Bartlett was an undeniable breakout star of the first season, going on to win an Emmy for his incredible work. Though his hotel manager Armond couldn’t return to Sicily (for obvious reasons), the actor has stayed booked and busy ever since, showing up in big roles this year in the second season of AppleTV+’s dark aerobics dramedy, Physical, as well as Hulu’s can’t-miss true-crime series, Welcome To Chippendales. Better yet, neither show was shy about tapping into Bartlett’s natural sex appeal, with both giving him standout moments where he was free to shake his groove thing—in a pair short-shorts, no less! 2022 really was the year of Murray Bartlett.

AppleTV+’s Physical (Season 2) – Premiere Date: June 3, and Hulu’s Welcome To Chippendale’s – Premiere Date: November 22.

Related: Murray Bartlett’s short shorts, a killer cast, and more reasons to watch ‘Welcome To Chippendales’