Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia’s 56 Days is 2026’s steamiest new show yet

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While sex has long been used to attract audiences, recent Hollywood films actually show less sexual content. A 2023 study found a 40% drop in on-screen sex scenes since 2000. This shift may be because almost half of Gen-Z viewers feel that TV and movies are already too focused on sex.

So, just when I thought things couldn’t get any more interesting after watching the intense hockey doc ‘Heated Rivalry,’ Prime Video dropped ’56 Days.’ And honestly, it feels like we’re seeing a bit of a shift in what kinds of stories are getting told – a willingness to explore more adult themes, which is a welcome change, in my opinion.

The new eight-episode series is based on Catherine Ryan Howard’s novel and follows Oliver Kennedy (Avan Jogia), a struggling architect, and Ciara Wyse (Dove Cameron), an enigmatic tech employee. They meet at a supermarket and quickly become involved in a passionate relationship that, as hinted by the discovery of a decomposing body in a bathtub at the very beginning, takes a dark and deadly turn.

The show explores how a charming first encounter quickly spiraled into a murder, but it takes a surprisingly long time to reveal the details. It jumps constantly between the current police investigation and flashbacks of their intense relationship. By the time the expected plot twist arrives, you might feel like you’ve spent too much time watching the story unfold.

While the show presents a core mystery – involving complex characters and disturbing secrets – it ultimately prioritizes romantic and sexual content over actually solving it. Entertainment and arousal are the main goals, not a genuine investigation.

About thirty-five minutes into the show, things become explicitly sexual after Ciara and Oliver playfully recreate the iconic “flying” scene from Titanic, but on a rooftop with wind machines. This is followed by energetic electronic music as the couple moves inside, where they undress amongst neon lights, silk sheets, and a setting that feels more like a red-light district than a typical apartment.

They quickly jump into intimacy, starting with playful interactions while having coffee. By the second episode, their desire for each other leads to passionate encounters, even in public places and while still dressed.

The show sometimes seems deliberately provocative and rebellious. Even when the couple isn’t being overtly intimate, they frequently show a lot of skin – for example, there’s an unnecessary scene of Oliver shirtless and sweating while doing yoga at midnight.

Karyn Usher and Lisa Zwerling, the creators of the show, clearly want to showcase their incredibly attractive leads, whom they’ve called “two of the best-looking people on Earth.” However, as we’ve seen with pairings like Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in ‘Anyone But You,’ Chris Evans and Ana de Armas in ‘Ghosted,’ and Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson in the ‘Fifty Shades’ films, simply putting two gorgeous people together doesn’t automatically create a believable connection.

Unfortunately, the chemistry between Jogia and Cameron doesn’t quite work. Both actors give good performances individually – Jogia plays a man burdened by a traumatic event from his privileged upbringing, and Cameron portrays a mysterious character who increasingly embodies a seductive and dangerous persona. However, despite numerous intimate scenes between them (around eight in total), their connection doesn’t feel convincingly passionate or driven by intense desire.

I’ve noticed both Cameron and Jogia started out doing family-friendly TV – Cameron with those Descendants fantasy movies, and Jogia on Victorious. It really feels like this new project is their chance to break away from those good-guy/girl images and show us a different side of themselves, and that’s what’s most interesting to me.

The show’s release comes at a tricky time, right after Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams captivated audiences with their intense chemistry and potential romance on ‘Heated Rivalry’. In contrast, the connection between Jogia and Cameron feels much less impactful, failing to generate the same level of excitement or anticipation.

It’s nice to see a recent TV show that doesn’t feel the need to protect viewers from difficult content. While ’56 Days’ makes several changes to the original story – moving the setting from Dublin to Boston, removing the COVID-19 storyline, and even altering the mystery itself – it smartly avoids reducing the intense physical intimacy that was key to the book’s popularity during the pandemic. Cutting back on that would likely have caused even more criticism.

There’s a lot more content like this on the way. In fact, viewers sensitive to mature themes might want to be cautious when browsing streaming services over the next year. Industry publication Deadline reports that at least nine ‘erotic thriller’ projects are currently being filmed.

The lineup also features ‘Teach Me,’ starring Mandy Moore as a teacher caught in a dangerous game of attraction with a student. ‘Hancock Park’ showcases Regé-Jean Page as a renter who gets involved with a secretive and provocative group in Los Angeles. Plus, Netflix is adapting the classic French novel ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses,’ which recently received a French-language series adaptation from HBO.

It’s unclear if any show will be as explicitly sexual as ’56 Days,’ but while it’s not the year’s best, it hints that television might be moving away from its recent avoidance of on-screen intimacy.

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Authors

Jon O’Brien
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2026-02-18 12:05