Can’t get a date for love nor money? Tried Tinder, OKCupid and every other dating app? Well, here’s a new dating show that guarantees you’ll have your kit off at first sight.
In Naked Attraction (Monday, Channel 4), contestants choose their date based purely on body parts – breasts, buttocks, penises and vaginas, and there's no pixilation to pander to your prudishness. My sofa suddenly feels very uncomfortable.
The format? One contestant is faced with six coloured boxes, inside each of which stands a naked person. You can just make out their silhouettes, like some creepy sci-fi experiment. The bodies are revealed "bit by wobbly bit", and our contestant must whittle down the contenders to one ideal body. And before the contestant makes their final choice, they have to get naked too. The only one not naked is the presenter, Anna Richardson. It's also LGBT-friendly: one contestant has a mix of guys and gals to choose from.
To dress it all up in some kind of legitimacy, Richardson regularly digresses into pseudo-scientific facts about human sexuality (“studies suggest” that women prefer girth over length); the programme bangs on about how “the clothes we wear can get in the way”; and the prospective dates keep telling themselves that “this is an empowering experience”, “I feel like I’ve achieved something massive here” and “this is good”. It’s not. It’s a bunch of naked people having their scrotums scrutinised and their vulvas value-judged. And you thought Coppers was a cattle-market. Whether they’re desperate for a date, or just desperate to be on TV is hard to tell. And whether true love blossoms on this nude tube is impossible to care about.
One guy has the dubious talent of being able to flex his testicles; another has elephant’s ears strategically tattooed on his thighs, just in case the ladies don’t notice his trunk. One woman is praised for her “Botticelli” figure, but then rejected because she’s a tad too Botticelli. In the end, you’re just hoping they’ll hurry up and make their choice so you don’t have to watch any more.
