Britain is notorious for TV that goes to extremes in the name of love – whether it’s Naked Attraction or the new Dating Naked UK. Are other countries this outrageous?
The first kiss in Netflix’s same-sex Japanese dating show The Boyfriend arrives an entire eight episodes in. Two cast members, Shun, 23, and Dai, 22, who have spent weeks embroiled in a “will they won’t they” dance, finally go on a “sleepover date”. Shun sidles into Dai’s single bed. And then, in a scene that will have you holding your breath in anticipation, the two men gradually tip their faces towards one another and touch lips. You can almost hear the proverbial fireworks. Yeeessssss, I screamed at the TV, weirdly excited about the prospect of two people I’ve never met kissing. Finally.
Quite different, then, to the BBC’s same-sex dating shows, I Kissed a Girl and I Kissed a Boy, in which cast members make out instantly upon meeting. And that’s not the most out-there UK format. Dating Naked UK – an upcoming Paramount+ series presented by Rylan Clark – will see people strip off completely before going on dates. And let us not forget Channel 4’s Naked Attraction, in which singles decide who they’re into based on a row of faceless naked bodies, like a meat counter. The only place left for us to go from here would be watching contestants have sex immediately on air – oh wait, that’s already been done on Sex Box, which ran on Channel 4 from 2013 to 2016 and saw couples have sex in a box before chatting about it to a live audience.
