HD Highlight: Masters of Sex (Season Two Premiere)

Masters of Sex: SoHo, 8.30 Sunday.

Season two of this seductive Mad Men successor opened to rapturous reviews this time last week in the US. TV Guide said the careers-in-limbo crisis facing fledgling sex researchers William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) is “upstaged by the heartbreaking turns in the marriage of Bill’s tormented mentor Barton Scully and his desperately unhappy wife Margaret (the superb Emmy-nominated guest actors Beau Bridges and Allison Janney). Despairing of the barbaric social and medical attitudes in the late ’50s toward his closeted homosexuality, Scully attempts to cure his ‘condition’ and rekindle the domestic fires, only making matters worse.” The Washington Post called what ensues “intelligent, witty, quick-paced and surprising; it is tragic without being emotionally devastating”. Echoed the Los Angeles Times: “In season two the issues and tensions remain the same, but perfectly dialed up a notch or two.” Variety said Sex returns “with all of its charms intact, juggling an assortment of plots built around sexuality, including the inherent lie in how the principals try to characterise their ongoing affair as ‘research’.”