Born on Apr 4, 1972 in Geldern am Niederrhein, Germany.

Sooner or later, anyone with a basic cable package has come across the USA Network and wondered why they’re paying for it.

On the one hand, it seems indistinguishable from any non-cable network: typical TV shows and movies of the week, both interrupted by commercials. Certainly nothing that warrants paying extra for. But then there are its other, better known titles, the ones that involve words like “beach”, “bikini”, and “summer”, the ones that seem to say with a wink, “Here’s what you’re paying for.”

But anyone who’s been lured into watching these made-for-monkey-spanking films on the USA Network soon realizes that something’s missing from them — namely the monkey-spanking material. Even though the channel is on cable only and can theoretically air its boobfest films in their entirety, it nonetheless feels compelled to surgically edit out all the boobs, leaving, as comedian David Spade used to remark in his act, a lot of “boobless crap”. (Imagine Enter the Dragon with all the martial arts scenes edited out — what would be the point of watching it?)

Unfortunately, it’s not the USA Network alone that’s guilty of movie mastectomy, but US networks in general. Even Showtime, a pay channel bristling with late night softcore flicks from Mystique, sometimes puts on even softer versions where the sex is shorter and less risqué. Worse still is the Spice channel, which airs actual porn films with all the porn taken out.

The problem here is that American networks try to have it both ways: they want the audiences that sex and nudity attract, but they’re afraid to deliver the actual sex and nudity lest some busybody in the Midwest complain. But what audience wants to watch a nudie flick without the nudity?

This is the problem now facing Xenia Seeberg and her show Lexx.

I’m as big a sci-fi nut as the next computer geek, but I’ve never really watched the Sci-Fi Channel. (It’s buried somewhere in a vast block of crap channels that I normally skip over on my way to the pay channels.) But so many people have been bugging me to add Xenia to the site since the Sci-Fi Channel acquired Lexx that I finally resolved to watch the show.

Lexx, for those who haven’t yet seen the show, is a semi-comedic space serial centering on the organic spaceship Lexx and her crew as they wreak havoc on the universe. Well, at least to the extent that Baywatch was about the challenges lifeguards face everyday keeping the beaches safe. The real reason to watch either series, of course, has nothing to do with Lexx’s humor and campiness or Baywatch’s oh-so-compelling storylines, but hooters.

In Lexx’s case, the hooters belong to busty German actress Xenia Seeberg, who stepped in mid-series to replace Eva Habermann in the role of “Xev”, a perpetually horny, provocatively dressed (and occasionally undressed) love-slave, willing and anxious to do just about anything on two legs but the Lexx’s captain.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a hooter-driven show. But the Lexx that we see here in the U.S., like every tittie flick on the USA Network, has the primary reason to watch the show edited out. All the show’s nudity and coarse language — both commonplace in European television — have been snipped and dropped into the same black hole that apparently swallowed the show’s entire first season here in the U.S. And what’s left after all the cuts and bleeps is, for me at least, just so much “boobless crap”.

What to do?

What the Sci-Fi Channel ought to do with the American version of Lexx, I think, is take a lesson from Baywatch — recognize that Xenia’s cleavage is the show’s main draw, and work in some Xenia thong montages to compensate for the loss of nudity. That, at least, will put the focus of the show back where it belongs.

(Some skimpier get-ups in general would be nice, too: attractive as Xenia is, those duck-like lips of hers look more like one of the show’s special effects than anything else; more threadbare clothes could draw attention away from that.)

In the meantime, though, as long as I have Skinemax to rely on for my nightly dose of unedited softcore, I’ll have to leave it to other, hornier sci-fi nerds to keep Lexx’s ratings in orbit.

Also sprach Golem.
(More recent commentary below)

FHM Hoopla
April 3, 2002
FHM has an online voting booth to determine whose recycled photos will fill the pages of their “100 Sexiest Women in the World” supplement. You can submit up to ten names. Add Xenia’s — it’ll increase her name recognition and help to land her a gig on a real movie where the nudity won't be edited out.

Film

• Der Clown (2005) .... Mona
• Lord of the Undead (2004)
• Beyond the Limits (2003) .... Clarice
• So, You’ve Downloaded a Demon (2003) .... Noel
• Das Erste Semester (1997) .... Silvia
• Hilda Humphrey (1997; aka “Hellchild”) .... Hilda Humphrey
• Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (1997) .... Polizistin im Hotel
• Mafia, Pizza, Razzia (1997) .... Freundin
• Farinelli: Il castrato (1994) .... Servant girl [uncredited]

• Die Großstadt-Sheriffs (2001) .... Die Amazone
• Ein Starkes Team — Kleine Fische, große Fische (2001) .... Rita
• Jetzt bringen wir unsere Männer um (2001)
• Liebe, Tod & viele Kalorien (2000) .... Verena

• Im Visier der Zielfahnder: “Unser täglich Brot” (Jul 17, 2002) .... Birgit
• Total Recall 2070: “Assessment” (May 11, 1999) .... Sela
• Ritas Welt (1999) .... Wenke Fromueller
• Lexx (1998-2002) .... Xev Bellringer
• Geliebte Schwestern (1997) .... Angie Wilhelm
• Nikola (1997) .... Marianne
• Verbotene Liebe (1996; aka “Forbidden Love”) .... Babette “Barbie” Marx

Cyber Temples

• Xenia Seeberg Nude Celebrity Movie Reviews
  Mr. Skin
  Bio, filmography, and nude stills from her films

Miscellaneous

• Xenia Seeberg Filmography
  Internet Movie Database
  Always up-to-date filmography
• Xenia Seeberg
  Wikipedia
  Xenia Seeberg in wikireality