Sex on TV owes A LOT to Showtime's legendary series The Red Shoe Diaries which aired for nearly all of the 1990s, debuting in 1992 and finally concluding in 1999. This sexy anthology series featured a bevy of babes. Interestingly, the audience was meant to be women...but it definitely appeared to be for people who love women.
Let's talk about it! Zalman King created this sexy series after networks like Cinemax and HBO starts delving into late-night programming that showed skin - aka skinemax. He teamed up with a couple who came on as producers to make a series that would titillate an untapped market.
He really believed that they were appealing to women with these fantasies...but there were rarely naked men in this series. It was all women. That's great for us! That also means that we were an attentive audience.
This softcore series was based on a man who asked frustrated women to write to him with their sexual issues, to use him as a diary of sorts. The man, Jake, is trying to recover from the betrayal of his now-dead fiancee who was cheating on him and then took her own life. He tries to understand why she did what she did and to get through his grief by advertising in the personal section of the paper for people to write to "Red Shoes" with their similar stories and how to get through them.
He narrates the beginning of each episode as he begins to read the letter sent to him. The narration then switches to the woman who is presumably writing in as she narrates her "problem" and the sex that surrounds it.
That's the premise - and the film that serves as the pilot - and Jake is played by the one and only David Duchovny. David starred in this at the same time as X-Files and he never wavered in his loyalty to The Red Shoe Diaries. He was a relative unknown, but as his star rose he never begrudged The Red Shoe Diaries. Meanwhile, Canadian actress Brigitte Bako played his fiancee and she was HOT as she went totally nude.
Brigitte was hot in her sex scenes in the "pilot" movie that sets up Jake's backstory (as if we really needed a backstory or a reason to check out all of these very sexy naked women in a variety of sexy positions). She also shows her breasts, backside, and furburger when she undresses with Duchovny. You should call this the XXX-Files!
Brigitte isn't the only hot babe who took it off...far from it! Cyia Batten, Audie England, Perrey Reeves, Denise Crosby, and so so so many more. Seriously. This is a nudity-filled anthology and the stories never seem to end (although some of them recycle details slightly, but they rarely recycle racks).
A lot of models and actresses did their first nude scenes in the series, such as supermodel Amber Smith. This blonde beauty got undressed to show off her perky pair with delight as she rolled around on the floor with her lucky man.
Jacqueline Lovell previously told Mr. Skin in an interview in the past that her episode in season 4 called "Caged Bird" was her most favorite role she has ever done. She said that she loves doing scenes where she can be nude in the water and she loved the eroticism of her shower scene monologue in this episode.
The sex is not explicit, but the nudity definitely veers on it - especially for the 1990s. There are so many breasts and a variety of nipples. We see asses and every now and then we see bush. This series went strong for a long time but is no longer airing. In fact, HBO took off sexy series like this from their streaming service years ago. It's hard to find the series as a whole, so you can enjoy the scenes here on Mr. Skin.
