The Steamiest Movies And Shows On HBO Max Right Now

It may be freezing outside this time of year, but that doesn't mean you can't heat things up a bit by watching some truly steamy entertainment. There are countless streaming services out there with abundant romantic content, but only one has a catalog deep enough to satisfy even the coldest of souls: HBO Max. Join us as we dive headfirst into all the saucy sights to be seen in both movies and television that will melt the snow and your heart.

Despite some troubling recent developments with HBO following their parent company being bought out by Discovery (and lots of content being subsequently canceled or outright erased), there's still endless options for those looking to watch some excitingly enticing stories at a moment's notice. Unlike competing streaming options, HBO brings high-quality original entertainment to the table alongside a collection of incredible mainstream productions going back decades.

HBO Max has everything from thrilling romances and erotic thrillers to satirical sex comedies and hilariously blunt reality shows that'll get your bedroom steamier than a sauna in no time. After all, HBO is the network of "Sex and the City" and "Game of Thrones" — it's always had a reputation for being a sex-positive network with lots of late-night adult programming on offer.

When it comes to movies about hunky beefcakes, you probably think about "Magic Mike." The sexy dramedy franchise started by director Steven Soderbergh back in 2012 showcases the life and times of male strippers immersed in their craft. "Magic Mike" features a star-studded cast of some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello, and Matt Bomer in a mostly shirtless narrative of love and loss. Interestingly, the film is heavily inspired by Tatum's real-life experiences as an 18-year-old stripper long before his Hollywood fame — Tatum produces and stars.

"Magic Mike" is a franchise that manages to ride the line of being funny, steamy, and serious without breaking a sweat. The first film focuses on a newcomer (Alex Pettyfer) to Xquisite Strip Club in Tampa who gets taken under the wing of a 10-year stripping veteran named Michael "Magic Mike" Lane (Tatum). While the film features numerous hot and heavy stripping sequences and more oiled-up dudes than an offshore rig, it also shows the darker side of their world. Not only can you watch the first film on HBO Max, but there's also "Magic Mike XXL," featuring an iconic sequence of Manganiello alluringly dancing in a convenience store to impress the clerk.

Branching away to something more seriously erotic in this list is Michael Haneke's 2001 psychological drama "The Piano Teacher," starring Isabelle Huppert as a lonely piano teacher who delves into an illicit sexual affair with one of her students (Benoît Magimel). Based on a novel from 1983 by Elfriede Jelinek, the story explores the complexities of an immoral but sensual sadomasochistic relationship between these two characters that is undeniably taboo.

"The Piano Teacher" has its steamy moments no doubt, but it is equally as disturbing and vile with how truly sexually repressed Huppert's character proves to be. Throughout the film, she insists upon extremes of masochistic depravity in her developing relationship with her student as well as going beyond the pale in manipulating the situation to her benefit (including maiming another student by putting broken glass in her pocket). Culminating in several truly disturbing sequences, the film develops into an intense psychological drama. Overall, this film is a complex piece of cinema that swings wildly from erotic to horrifying at a moment's notice. That is likely why it gained such significant critical acclaim upon release, with multiple awards at that year's Cannes Film Festival such as Best Actress, Best Actor, and the Grand Prix.

Yet another piece of intense seductive filmmaking was Adrian Lyne's 1986 erotic romance film "9½ Weeks," based on Ingeborg Day's similarly named 1978 memoir about her experiences going through an intense, violent, and troubling sexual affair that only lasted for a titular nine and a half weeks. For the film adaptation, Kim Basinger plays Elizabeth McGraw as a woman who works at a New York City art gallery and gets flung into an all-consuming romance with a stock broker played by Mickey Rourke.

While the film was generally considered a box office bomb, it has gone down as one of the most intensely steamy entries in the careers of both its main leads. "9½ Weeks" has only a 58% score on Rotten Tomatoes and, unfortunately, only made a fraction of its $17 million budget back from ticket sales. Nonetheless, this film has endured thanks in no small part to the sexual chemistry of Basinger and Rourke as well as its universally enjoyed soundtrack. Just goes to show that even a poorly received movie can still have some heat behind it.

From the mind of "The Office" alum Mindy Kaling (also known for "The Mindy Project" and the film "Late Night") comes an absolutely hilarious new comedy series called "The Sex Lives of College Girls." As the straightforward name suggests, this series is all about incoming freshmen at Essex College who must juggle their academics, social lives, and complicated sexual experiences as they progress into adulthood.

"The Sex Lives of College Girls" stars Pauline Chalamet, Amrit Kaur, Reneé Rapp, and Alyah Chanelle Scott as four roommates from different backgrounds who get themselves into amusing situations (usually revolving around their sex lives). Serving as an alternative perspective to the usual male-focused college comedies of the past such as "Animal House," Kaling's series instead empowers these female characters to be front and center in their own romantic experiences as young adults. As a result, "The Sex Lives of College Girls" has proven to be a critical success with critics and audiences, who love the unique balance between raunchy humor and genuine sentimentality. One reviewer for /Film emphasized what makes the show so effective by saying that Season 2 is "shaking up the steamy status quo."

Before all these other series showcasing the entertaining romances of modern life, there was "Sex and the City." As a forerunner of many shows to come, it pioneered how media portrays the sexuality, relationships, and personal lives of women in a much more progressive way. The show is centered around four women in their 30s and 40s who live in New York City and, as deeply close friends, help each other navigate their complicated personal and professional lives.

"Sex and the City" stars Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, who serves as the main character of the foursome as well as the omniscient narrator. Bradshaw works as a column writer who publishes a weekly piece — titularly titled "Sex and the City" — that usually touches on her tenuous romance with Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Then, there's the overachieving romantic Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), the sexually outgoing PR agent Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), and the rational and cynical lawyer Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon). All the women have steamy sex lives of their own over the series, from one-night stands to unexpected pregnancies to touching weddings ... and an episode where Samatha consults with a wrestling coach (Peter Onorati) to try new sex positions. "Sex and the City" was a massive success for HBO that helped put the network on the map for adult programming, and the show continued with two films and a sequel series, "And Just Like That...," that brought back all the original characters (sans Cattrall).

It may be hard for some to imagine that a film from the 1950s could ever be truly steamy for modern audiences, but nobody could think that after watching "And God Created Woman." This sensual French drama was directed by Roger Vadim and starred Brigitte Bardot as a seductive woman who toys with various suitors (Curd Jürgens, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Christian Marquand) in the gorgeous town of Saint-Tropez. While it may be an older movie, this liberated piece of post-war French filmmaking holds nothing back in its portrayal of human sexuality and is the film that made Bardot a star.

"And God Created Woman" shows Bardot's character, Juliette, as a totally sexually open being who is unafraid to engage in relations with anyone of her choosing. The film features significant nudity, which was unusual for this era (especially in the United States, which put films through the rigorous Hays Code of censorship) and was even officially condemned by the luckily now-extinct National Legion of Decency Catholic organization. "And God Created Woman" remains an important and genuinely saucy piece of foreign filmmaking that even got a 1988 English-speaking remake by the same director. But the original is immortal, thanks to sex symbol Brigitte Bardot.