The seven-part series invites 12 adult “virgins” to a retreat in Croatia where they will work on their “intimacy issues” with sex experts who have the ultimate aim of helping them have sex. A reality series dressed up as a therapy session, it’s all billowing beige tents, “breathwork” and earnest conversations about touch and shame – no one ever speaks louder than a whisper. If it sounds like a holistic, worthwhile endeavour, then the reality is altogether more disturbing. In reality, it’s an icky, uncomfortable sexperiment that puts its already vulnerable participants through visibly upsetting scenarios.
Emma pushed her boundaries in a session with ‘sexological bodyworker’ Thomas Rocourt (Photo: Channel 4)
This makes what happens next that bit harder to watch. In Emma’s one-to-one session with an older, male sex therapist, Emma is encouraged to test her boundaries of touch. She puts on a brave face, and invites him to touch her on the knee, then further up her thigh before ending the meeting. I’d like to think that the Virgin Island producers took all the necessary steps to protect their participants’ well-being and that willing consent was front and centre at all times. But even with the knowledge that Emma was there of her own volition, watching a therapist in a position of power slide his hand up a young girl’s thigh while she visibly squirms makes for unpleasant TV.
square CHANNEL 4 Channel 4 documentaries have lost the plot again
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Even when the virgins aren’t teary, and are more enthusiastic about improving their intimacy skills, Virgin Island remains unpleasant. Twenty-eight-year-old delivery driver Zac shows so much willing that he is soon fast-tracked to a session with a “surrogate partner” – a sort of specialist sex teacher who “uses her own body” to make her clients comfortable with sexual touch and beyond. If Zac wants to, she will go all the way with him.
Future episodes will see the virgins go even further with the ‘surrogate partners’ (Photo: Channel 4)As with most Channel 4 “experiments”, Virgin Island is deliberately controversial television that only pretends to engage with serious social issues. I can only hope that the participants gained something positive from the experience and are being looked after as their most intimate moments are broadcast on national television. Because Virgin Island isn’t just outrageous entertainment – it’s morally reprehensible.
‘Virgin Island’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4
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