Michelle Williams’ Superb ‘Dying for Sex’ Is a Defiantly Joyful Tale of Terminal Cancer and BDSM: TV Review

“It’s a bodily process,” a hospital worker tells cancer patient Molly (Michelle Williams) of her impending death. “Like having an orgasm.”

HARD COPY: Cancer, BDSM, and a recommendation – ‘Dying for Sex’

We are more than just theory whores and policy nerds. We actually watch TV too. Heck, we even get out to the occasional film and noodle around in the occasional video game. It would be irresponsible of us – a green journalistic enterprise primed on sex – to ignore the medium of popular culture. Sure, popular culture plays host to lots of stupidity and vapid commercial interests, but it also is revelatory of group think, or more specifically, group desire. As Stuart Hall – the famous Jamaican-born British sociologist and cultural theorist – has argued, popular culture matters because it is a constantly shifting terrain of power dynamics that reflects to us what we collectively want in a particular moment.

Dying for Sex is an American comedy drama mini-series that was just released by FX on April 4, 2025. The series is based loosely on the real-life experience of Molly Kochan. When the protagonist in the show – played by Michelle Williams – is diagnosed with a terminal illness, she initiates an erotic quest in what little time she has left. A death sentence, although often tragic and sometimes shocking, just might have the leverage needed to unmoor sexual subjects from their social conditioning so that they can accept what it is they want and move towards getting it. We’re linking you to this lovely little interview by Black Girl Nerds with some of show’s actors, as well as this thoughtful analysis of the project from TV critic Alison Herman. “The thesis of ‘Dying for Sex’” – Herman observes – “is summed up by that piece of advice the screen version of Molly receives in hospice: death and sex may seem like opposites — one life’s conclusion, the other its potential beginning — but are, in truth, connected at their core. Both are building blocks of our basic biology. Both can be unexpectedly funny.” So, if you give a shit about life, death, and/or sex, this just might be some boob tube that is worthy of your attention.