Seeing his biography of sex researchers Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson turned into a Showtime television series was like winning the lottery, writer Thomas Maier said, though he had to be convinced that the TV offer was better than proposals to make a movie of it.

Maier, who has been a reporter at the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday for 30 years, said he had two or three serious offers to turn his 2009 book, "Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught...