General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Us without Sex (今夜一起为爱鼓掌)

Us without Sex (今夜一起为爱鼓掌) is a 2024 Taiwanese television drama series about sex therapy, following a sex therapist who cannot love and a librarian who cannot have sex with her husband. It ran for 12 episodes, premiered on September 1, 2024 on the streaming platform MyVideo, and was promoted by its production companies as Asia's first drama series with sex therapy as its subject.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	今夜一起为爱鼓掌; the phrase 为爱鼓掌 is internet slang for having sex³
Premiere	September 1, 2024, Sundays at 9 pm on MyVideo; also on iQIYI International and the GTV channel 八大戏剧台¹^•⁴
Format	12 episodes of about 60 minutes each; Mandarin language; produced in Taiwan⁵^•⁶
Main cast	杨谨华 as 张佳晨, Ella陈嘉桦 as 宋青语, 杨祐宁 as 林书哲 (阿哲), 王柏杰 as 王纪华⁷
Director	李俊宏⁸
Producer on screen	杨祐宁 served as supervising producer (监制) as well as lead actor¹
Recognition	Nominated for Drama Program Award at the 114th Golden Bell Awards (2025)⁹
Audience rating	6.8 on IMDb and MyVideo⁶^•¹⁰

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series is built on a double female lead. 张佳晨 (杨谨华) is a confident, outspoken sex therapist who is skilled at sex but does not know how to love; she also fronts the clinic's YouTube channel and carries a lingering regret over 王纪华 (王柏杰), a lover who vanished when she confessed her feelings. 宋青语 (Ella陈嘉桦) is a quiet librarian whose marriage to the architect 林书哲, known as 阿哲 (杨祐宁), looks enviable from the outside, but she cannot have sex with him. The two women, one who cannot love and one who cannot have sex, meet when 青语 seeks help at the counseling clinic and discovers the therapist is a high school classmate she did not get along with.⁷^•³

The official synopsis frames the story as a healing journey: as the two women grow willing to face themselves and open old wounds, they search for redemption in love through their exploration of sex.¹⁰ A recurring line from 佳晨, "if the body is happy, it will help pull your heart along," states the show's thesis that physical and emotional intimacy are connected.⁷

Episode arc

The 12 episodes trace parallel treatments. Early episodes establish 青语 and 阿哲 seeking 佳晨's help for their intimacy problem, 青语's suspicion of an affair, and gradual progress in therapy; a mid-series revelation shows 青语 once saved 佳晨, and 佳晨 recalls it. Later episodes bring 佳晨's old love 纪华 back into her life, 阿哲's frustration after rejected advances, couples counseling, 青语's confrontation with the trauma of a miscarriage, 佳晨's dismissal from her job, a camping trip and a marriage proposal from 纪华 that 佳晨 refuses, and a dispute between 青语 and 阿哲 over parenting. The finale leaves both women with the courage to face the future after treatment.⁵

A distinctive device is a phone counseling line: 佳晨 and 阿哲 become anonymous telephone confidants without realizing each other's identity, staged with theatrical, stage-play-like scene design that reviewers highlighted as giving the show much of its texture.⁷^•¹¹

Production and release

The series was co-produced by 壹壹影业, 台湾大哥大 (Taiwan Mobile), 乐到家国际娱乐, 友松娱乐, and 玩下娱乐.⁹ Taiwan Mobile joined as a co-producer, and its press release for the August 29, 2024 launch event described the show as Asia's first sex-therapy-themed series, starring 杨祐宁 as supervising producer and lead alongside 杨谨华, Ella陈嘉桦, and 王柏杰.¹^•² The first two episodes were offered free on MyVideo, and a tie-in campaign with the hotel brand 旅居文旅 gave bookers free 7-day MyVideo trial codes through October 15, 2024.¹ Supporting cast included 谢琼煖, 季芹, 林美贞, 巫建和, and 草爷.⁴

Beyond MyVideo, iQIYI International, and 八大戏剧台, the series later appeared on Netflix; a March 2025 review noted its arrival there.⁴^•¹¹ On Now TV the episodes are listed at about 60 minutes each with a removal date of September 16, 2026.⁵

Reception

The show drew attention for its frankness. Coverage described it as pushing the boundaries of Taiwanese drama with scenes of masturbation and erotic massage, and as Ella's most explicit acting role to date.¹² An interview published by the Hong Kong outlet 端传媒 placed the series in the context of 2024 Taiwanese drama's widening subject matter, noting the production's claim to be the first Asian sex-therapy drama and its exploration of contemporary forms of sex and love in Taiwan.¹³

Reviewers generally read the explicit content as a vehicle rather than the point. A Tatler Asia review argued that although the series uses sex to draw viewers, it is really about how sex affects a person's capacity to love, presenting sex counseling from a female perspective.³ A udn review written after the Netflix release called it deeper than expected, saying the counseling scenes gradually open into discussions of love and of what each person actually wants, and praised the theatrical staging of the phone-line scenes.¹¹ An analysis by YOLO LAB read the sex counseling less as a curiosity than as a form of communication practice, with humor opening a safer entry point to difficult conversations.¹⁴

Quantitative signals were mixed. IMDb and MyVideo both list a user rating of 6.8.⁶^•¹⁰ iQIYI's page shows a 9.6 score on its own scale.⁸ In the DailyView network buzz ranking of Taiwanese dramas for September 14 to October 13, 2026, the series ranked 88th for the month, with 41 recorded mentions, 85 percent positive sentiment, and 杨祐宁 as the top keyword.¹⁵ A momo livestream of the premiere press conference, featuring 杨祐宁, Ella陈嘉桦, 杨谨华, and director 李俊宏, drew about 28,536 views and roughly 11,515 unique viewers.¹⁶

The series was nominated for the Drama Program Award at the 114th Golden Bell Awards, Taiwan's major television honors, alongside titles including The Outlaw Doctor (化外之医).⁹ A regional press roundup of 2024 to 2025 Chinese-language dramas grouped it with 《影后》 and 《不够善良的我们》 as Taiwanese series that, despite attention-grabbing premises, center on mutual aid and friendship between women.¹⁷

Context: sex on screen

The series arrived as audience attitudes toward onscreen sex were being debated internationally. A 2023 UCLA "Teens and Screens" study of 1,500 members of Generation Z in the United States, ages 10 to 24, found that 47.5 percent of respondents aged 13 to 24 agreed sex was not needed for the plots of most TV shows and movies, and 44.3 percent felt romance is overused in media; more than half wanted more content focused on friendships and platonic relationships.¹⁸ Against that backdrop, 《今夜一起为爱鼓掌》 took the opposite approach of making sex and its absence the explicit center of the story, while directing the drama at the emotional questions underneath.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › Hong Kong and Taiwanese serial drama

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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