Lost Girl
Lauren (Zoie Palmer) and Bo (Anna Silk) share a steamy kiss in Lost Girl © Showtime
(Relatively spoiler free!) Supernatural creatures, magical powers, super-hot heroes, dark forces, friends, foes, sexy escapades, murder and mayhem, S&M, mysteries, outlandish plots, monsters, people having sex with literally anything that moves, low(ish) budget, twisted beyond belief Celtic and Norse mythology…
If all of the above doesn't appeal to you, you're not going to like Lost Girl. On the other hand, if you’re a specfic-loving gay girl then this is the show of your dreams (until you also find Motherland: Fort Salem, Wynonna Earp, Willow, or Warrior Nun!)
Lost Girl follows the story of Bo Dennis (Anna Silk) who is a Succubus. If you’re not up on your made-up mythology, a Succubus is a woman who derives power from seduction and feeding on someone’s life essence.
Bo is Fae (a concept loosely based around Faerie Folk from Celtic mythology), a concept Romantasy fans will be well familiar with now. Fae have two clans they must choose between - light or dark. These clans exist in a strained truce imposed by ancient laws, but they have different philosophies regarding humans and how to exercise their powers.
Bo remains unaligned, which means she is beholden to neither, but is protected by no one. She relies on her group of friends and lovers, Fae and human, to give her friendship, love, guidance, help, sanity, and healing.
There's her best friend Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) the sexy, human reformed criminal. There's Lauren the sexy human doctor who works for the Light Fae. There's Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried), the sexy werewolf who is a cop in his "human" life, and his seriously ripped partner Hale (K.C Collins), who is a Siren. Are we spotting the sexy theme?
Bo doesn't set out to save the world, but she has a strong sense of morality and will fight to protect it. This combined with superhuman powers gets her into scrapes from time to time. Bo really is part of a prophecy to save or destroy the world, which very much reflects her inability to choose between light and dark.
Over and above being a ripping yarn, Lost Girl is a bold exploration of queer sexuality. Bo isn't even pansexual - she's just walking sex. Her life force (or "chi") is derived from it, she would die without it. This isn't new territory, what is vampire mythology but a giant metaphor for sex? But it does mean that the writers have given themselves a whole lot of room here to flip some well-worn, female genre hero tropes on their heads.
Bo has spent her life being afraid of her sexuality because every time she has sex people end up dead. With Lauren's help, she learns to feed safely, one gigantic metaphor for a woman taking back sexual power, and shedding her guilt for liking sex. It's not subtle, but it works.
Bo has two significant (and more casual) sexual relationships with women, the most noteworthy is her on again, off again romance with Lauren. The other is with Tamsin (genre veteran Rachel Skarsten), a Valkyrie with an attitude.
The major body parts are skillfully covered during sex scenes, but it's equal opportunity raunchiness here, with equal amounts of boy and girl candy. Specfic TV tends to be sexually conservative, and before you start throwing examples like Buffy, Xena, Sense8, and The 100 around, I would remind you what happens in all of those shows. Someone invariably ends up emotionally tortured or dead. Bo goes through a lot of ups and downs, but the show never punishes her for her sexuality.
Let the prudish beware, Lost Girl revels in bumping body parts. Everyone usually wants to sleep with Bo or kill her, often interchangeably. Anna Silk has the time of her life , never holding back on the sex, the melodrama, or any opportunity to look hot in leather pants or a floor-length gown. Vegans beware - I don't even want to know how many cows died to provide this girl with her wardrobe.
It might sound shallow, and it so is, but its just fun, and that’s what specfic is all about.