Box Hill, subtitled A Story of Low Self-Esteem, is a 2020 novella by Adam Mars-Jones, which was adapted into the film Pillion (2025). An awkward young gay man becomes the live-in submissive of a charismatic biker.
This essay includes spoilers for Box Hill and Pillion.
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Secret Life of a Dominatrix is a 2024 made-for-TV movie directed by Gabby Revilla Lugo and starring Mariel Molino and Andrew Biernat.
Secret Life is clearly post-Fifty Shades as the inciting incident is a group of women reading an erotic novel in a book club, and it also draws on the Netflix “female-centric thriller” genre. Generically, it’s an heir to the tradition of the direct-to-cable or direct-to-video erotic thrillers and melodramas of the 1990s: female subjectivity and sexual development, upper-bourgeois setting, the acute anxiety of sex and danger in a post-HIV world, sex scenes that stay well-within the lines of an R rating.
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You can watch my friend TammyJo and I discuss Sanctuary (2022).
The revival series CSI: Vegas starts its second season with a dead sex worker, unsurprisingly. One of the first lines of dialog is a CSI looking at the bondage gear and saying, “The more things change, huh?” The cast of characters is mostly new, but the dynamic is largely the same.
The victim is pro dominatrix Lynn Zobrist, stabbed in her home with piece of a broken mirror. The perpetrator also took the time to drag all of the furniture out of her dungeon, cover the walls, floor and ceiling with glued-on mirrors, and leave Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” playing on repeat. Her housekeeper described her as “sad” and alone except for her clients.
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Air date: March 23, 2023, Director: Norberto Barba, Writer: Brendan Feeney
Two women, Zoe Greene and Jenna Scott, are in a nightclub. Jenna is pushing hard for Zoe to date again after the death of her husband. Jenna introduces Zoe to a dating app and gets her to connect to “Klaus Darcy”. Zoe’s online relationship with Klaus escalates to sexting, a little D&S, and gift exchanges, like lingerie. (Zoe mentions that she and her late husband used to get “a little freaky”.)
Zoe sets up a meeting with Klaus at a hotel room, including bondage with her late husband’s neckties. She’s wearing black lingerie and a collar with an O ring. The text messages tell her to pose by the window, and she answers “Yes, sir.”
Dying for Sex S01E06 “Happy Holidays”
After Molly, Niki and Sonya celebrate the one-year anniversary of Molly’s cancer return, she has another dom-sub session with Neighbor Guy. Along the way, Molly gets turned on with him, but her anxiety returns, represented by a vision of a man with a blurry face. She partially opens up to Neighbor Guy about her childhood sexual abuse, and that she’s never had an orgasm with another person. She tells him she wants to try to orgasm with him, and he’s eager to help.
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In S01E05, “My Pet”, Molly continues seeing (and dominating) Neighbor Guy, and starts seeing Pet, a man into puppyplay, complete with costume and collar. However, she hasn’t told either of them about her cancer. She orders Neighbor Guy to finish himself off and goes into the bathroom to finish herself off with a vibrator.
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Dying for Sex is a 2025 dramedy series about a woman, Molly, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and leaves her husband in search of sexual fulfillment.
In “Topping is a Sacred Skill”, the fourth episode of the first (and apparently only) season, Molly continues her exploration of her sexuality. In between episodes, she attended a BDSM play party and is intrigued by a dominant there known as G.
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Dying for Sex is a 2025 dramedy series about a woman, Molly, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and leaves her husband in search of sexual fulfillment.
In S01E03 “Feelings Can Become Amplified”, Molly starts taking a medication that gives her mood swings, while also struggling with vaginal dryness. She has a peculiar relationship with a man in her apartment building (aka “Neighbor Guy”): she’s disgusted by him, but she has a “mistake orgasm” by masturbating while she can hear him masturbating through their shared thin wall.
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Pillion is a 2025 romance/drama, directed by Harry Lighton and starring Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling IMDB
A shy gay man meets a handsome biker and becomes his submissive.
[Spoilers ahead]
Collin is an out but shy and inexperienced gay man. After singing in a barbershop quartet in a pub on Christmas Eve, he sees Ray, a tall, handsome biker who might have stepped out of a Tom of Finland illustration. Later that night, Ray is joined by a group of other bikers, some of whom are submissive to others. Ray discretely orders Collin to perform a small act of service. Collin complies, and Ray slips him his number.
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