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Who is Virgin Island for? Is it for the roughly one in eight 26-year-olds (the show tells us) who haven’t yet had sex – for various reasons – but want to? Or is it for people who want to peer through the aquarium glass at them in abject fascination?
The show doesn’t seem to know – and, two episodes in, neither do I.
At least Virgin Island’s premise is simple. Take 12 virgins (it insists on referring to them as such throughout the following episodes, to really Hammer Home The Point) and dump them on a remote island off the coast of Croatia.
The aim, we are told, is for them to do an intensive two-week boot camp with sex therapists. Their idea of therapy, however, is less about talking and more about grinding up against each other in a tent while the participants look on, appalled.
The participants’ stated goal, for the most part, is to have had sex for the first time by the end of the fortnight. And because Everything! Is! Content! that might involve it being on camera too.
It’s hard not to feel for those taking part – not least because appearing on this show requires them to lay their souls (as well as other bits) bare for us, repeatedly.
We meet Emma, who tearfully explains that she was repeatedly referred to as the “DUFF (designated ugly fat friend)” of her friendship group in high school; Taylor, who has never had a positive sexual experience and is still coming to terms with her sexuality; and Tom, whose campness has left him permanently friendzoned.
They all have intimacy issues, to varying degrees. Some, like Jason, don’t like being touched at all (though as an employee of the House of Commons, he does love a handshake). This is a problem, because most of the therapy involves increasingly heavy (consensual) petting by the most highly sexed bunch of therapists I have ever seen.
This is not television for watching at home with the parents; things get hot and heavy right from the start. We get therapist-on-therapist action; we get therapists who volunteer themselves to be ‘intimacy partners’ for certain members of the group; we get moans and groans and participants feeding each other bananas blindfolded and others being asked to write and read their sexual fantasies in front of the entire group.
A lot of this is agonising to watch. Nobody wants to remember their first time; these people are being asked to immortalise theirs on national television, inconvenient boners and all. And while they are game for it, it does feel slightly like they’re being taken advantage of for the benefit of prime time viewing figures. Surely they’re not going to look back on this with fondness?
When it’s not telling us where things stand with “the virgins”, the show does touch on some interesting topics. Why, for instance, are people increasingly abstaining from sex? Why are they scared of sex? Therapist Dr Danielle Harel theorises at one point that our cultural obsession with porn and rom-coms have given rise to a fear of “perfectionism” – but as quickly as these insights are placed before us, they’re snatched away.
As the show progresses, it is heartwarming watching these shy, unconfident people open up and get experimental, chivvied along by their army of therapists. But it’s also hard not to feel like this should have been conducted behind closed doors. Not everything should be content; far from empowering the people at its centre, it feels more like Channel 4 are shocking us for the sake of it.
Virgin Island is streaming now on Channel 4
