After spending another Valentine’s Day single and too tired to mingle, I didn’t think I’d be in the mood to watch a show called “Masters of Sex,” which sounds like it’d be some sort of kinky superhero pornography. But against my better judgment, I decided to consummate my curiosity.

As college students, we obviously have — to varying degrees — obsessions with sex, and that fascination didn’t end during adolescence for William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan, who played Janis Ian from “Mean Girls,” as you might recall).

The real-life researchers raised eyebrows in the conservative ’50s when they began researching and documenting human sexuality. But be glad they were shameless in their approach: Their findings led to the diagnosis and treatment of many sexual disorders, even landing them a TIME Magazine cover and much sexy-time in their subsequent marriage. So the show had a lot of story to go off already.

Caplan, who has portrayed outcasts before, does an exceptional job with doe-eyed but sharp-tongued Johnson, who refuses to let any social stigma associated with assisting Masters with his interesting sexual experiments (some even, uh, concerning their relationship) keep her from making innovations that she supports. A woman capable of making her own decisions and believing sex and love can be separate, Johnson’s been through two divorces, and she knows her emotional limits enough to stand up to anyone who challenges her sexual identity — Masters included.

Johnson stands out among her catty female co-workers who find it scandalous that she’d give Masters a hand (no pun intended), and she embodies both the 1960s and millennials’ ideas of youth liberation ahead of her time. More sexually confident than socially awkward Masters, her powerhouse of a female character moves the story along even when there’s no foreplay going on in the lab behind closed doors.

Sheen is pretty impressive as Masters, a logic-driven closet misogynist you might find yourself admiring and saying a few choice words about in the same breath. He and his wife are unable to conceive, according to the pilot, which might explain how he might strive for interesting, err, compensation in other areas — and women — of his life.

Of course, a show about coitus would get boring if the male protagonist were as likable as the female. Masters might be sexist, but the contrast between his attitude and Johnson’s foreshadows future plots in which their differing ideologies could help them influence each other in one way or another.

It extends, too, past the two individuals: Workplace attitudes regarding gender are reminiscent of what one would see on “Mad Men.” There’s underlying social commentary on the dynamics of men and women, but from a less one-sided perspective — not that more Don Draper screentime would be a bad thing.

The duo’s studies began in Missouri at Washington University in St. Louis, so there’s another surprising fun fact. Sets depicting the city are pretty classy, as St. Louis 60 years ago was obviously a different time and place as compared to today. And as Masters and Johnson go from brothels to the lab to surveying women on their individual “habits,” one gets a picture of not just the underlying culture toward sex but also the sense that we’ve always been horny, regardless of era.

The real-life “masters of sex” broke a lot of social taboos, and if it weren’t for their observations and published work, a lot of attitudes toward sex and knowledge about sex might be different.

You’d be surprised that when I first started “Masters,” I actually found myself engrossed with the storyline and its real-life research. It stands that I forgot I should probably lock my door, for fear of my roommate walking in on what would look like me watching people timing how many thrusts it takes for a male subject to achieve “true happiness.”

So check out “Masters of Sex” if you’re looking to rationalize watching people romp around “in the name of science.”