Looking for love? Dress as a shark! Is Sexy Beasts a new low for dating shows?
“Ass first, personality second,” says a deadpan beaver at a bar. Meanwhile, a panda with pleading eyes says she wants a baby by the age of 26. A rhino in a dress shirt chips in with “Vulnerability is our biggest muscle” – and gets a high five from a delighted dolphin.
What fresh hell is this? Are we not, for just one moment, deserving of a rest? Netflix says no. After holding us hostage for three weekswith Love Is Blind – in hindsight, not a good use of our last days before the pandemic – the evil-genius algorithm has come up with another “dating experiment”.
In Sexy Beasts, an eligible single is tasked with choosing between three dates on the strength of vibe alone. This is assessed through everyday activities such as ice-sculpting and axe-throwing, culminating in a dramatic elimination ceremony in front of a fireplace in a mansion. The format is familiar, but there is a deeply unsettling twist: every participant is wearing elaborate prosthetics, casting doubt on the key question. Are they, or are they not, sexy underneath?
The trailer caused an immediate stir on social media, with disturbed viewers denouncing Netflix for taking “high-concept” too close to the sun. In fact, this monster was born on British shores, with Sexy Beasts a faithful remake of a short-lived BBC Three series from 2014 – right down to the London setting. So, as much as Britons might be tempted to dismiss Sexy Beasts as the result of a US TV exec’s experiment with microdosing for creativity, we only have ourselves to blame for this monster’s ball.
Sexy Beasts has the same surrealist horror as The Masked Singer, the hugely successful singing competition that is like free-to-air LSD. Where else would a Bangles-singing pharaoh be revealed as former home secretary Alan Johnson? Watching Jonathan Ross and Davina McCall under hot lights hollering “TAKE IT OFF, TAKE IT OFF” at a humanoid sunflower is enough to make you wonder if we haven’t finally slipped into the fascist world of The Hunger Games and the outrageous, bloodthirsty excess of the Capitol.
Sexy Beasts brings the same energy to the search for love – and the show is eager to justify its intervention. “When it comes to dating, we all go for looks,” says Catastrophe’s Rob Delaney, blithely, clearly enjoying himself as narrator. “So in this show, everyone looks as weird as possible. Could you fall in love with someone based on personality alone?”
He poses the question with the trepidation of a child asking if a rhino and a dolphin really could fall in love. Indeed, some of the Sexy Beasts seem positively alarmed by the possibility of unknowingly interacting with an “uggo” – though there are many cues to physical attractiveness, and attraction, that aren’t obscured by the gnarly masks. (Says the beaver, of pulling out his dates’ chairs: “It was a great excuse to look at their asses a little bit.”)
Fortunately – and, in our society, this is not a spoiler – everyone involved is very hot. At least three people are actual models, and more have hotpeople jobs such as volleyballer or professional dancer. The latter, Ibrahim, is hot even with the wolf mask – maybe especially with the wolf mask, the cream sweater and grey whiskers invoking urbane Mr Fox.
The exclusive participation of strong 8s to indisputable 10s on the desirability index is a limitation of the show’s stated experiment in non-physical attraction – not that the participants themselves seem committed to it. “He’s got an amazing physique, he’s really good looking, he’s going to be a doctor,” says one woman, pleased with her newfound connection.
No one watches dating shows for dating tips, not even those significantly less deranged than Sexy Beasts: even setting aside the furry suits, the massaging of reality by reality TV obliterates any relevance to the real world. Yet it’s striking how insistently the shows suggest otherwise – that there’s method in their madness. Indeed, Love Is Blind returns next weekwith a threepart series, After the Altar, following up with the couples it created: not just testing a theory, but dutifully delivering the results.
All modern dating shows posit some sort of hypothesis: is the secret to finding true love … seeing them naked first? Immediately getting married? Cooking them a meal? Taking an archery course? A four-week “heavy petting” ban with a cash bonus? Finding someone better than your ex? Or, being dumped on an island and not let off until they finally pick someone?
Without being too credulous about how dating shows engage with these questions, the very fact that they are being asked reflects a desire for emotional connection – and deep confusion about how to obtain it.
Why is Sexy Beasts, deemed a bridge too far seven years ago, suddenly ripe for return? Is it as straightforward as the success of The Masked Singer? Or is it that we are now in such a tailspin about how to pair up that we will entertain any idea, no matter how ludicrous?
That was my hypothesis when I sat down to watch Sexy Beasts. I did not expect it to be validated within seconds: “I am so single I am dressed as a panda bear to try to find a connection with someone,” declares Kariselle.
In claiming to present answers – that finding a meaningful relationship could be as simple as looking past looks – dating shows often hold up a mirror to the problem. The masks are not Sexy Beasts’ only indicator of love lives in freefall, or what the feminist academic Jane Ward has described as the “tragedy of heterosexuality”. Several participants say they are dissatisfied with dating apps and superficial connections.
Two people on a date talk a big game about the bedroom, then can’t bring themselves to look at the naked model at a life-drawing class (they both drew the armchair). A man dressed as a mouse admits to wearing women’s perfume on nights out as a ploy to attract them: “They like the smell of it ... it’s just already a box ticked.”
A self-described Disney fan, who has not been on a date for two years, says she is now ready for her Prince Charming: “When I thought about getting back into the dating game, I never expected that I would be dressed up in this frog mask.”
It is jarring to watch people talk about being eager to wed from beneath layers of latex – like those behindthe-scenes pictures from The Lord of the Rings showing Orcs at the catering table. But the juxtaposition is telling of our continued hopes for romance and relationships at a moment when they may seem impossible. Of the tragedies of heterosexuality depicted in Sexy Beasts, the masks are minor – not to mention compulsively watchable.
Sexy Beasts’ chief point of distinction from the many dating shows that exploit these anxieties is that it is highly entertaining. Where Love is Blind was straight-faced and fauxscientific, Sexy Beasts is almost satirical about the search for love, helped by Delaney’s genuinely funny narration. The transatlantic mix of contestants amplifies the sense of everyone talking at cross purposes. (“What inspires you to be a better person?” asks Ibrahim the wolf. “Humanity thriving,” says his date.)
If we are to entertain the idea that romance could blossom between strangers in front of a camera, I would rather watch a demon make out with a mandrill at Thorpe Park on Sexy Beasts than Dinner Date, presenting two normal people, fumbling through their pesto pasta, hoping to feel something.
That is just an average bad date, while “a dolphin and a scarecrow walk into a bar” sounds like the set-up to a great joke. Who cares if it might be on us?
Sexy Beasts is on Netflix from 21 July