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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Emine Saner

‘My body deserves pleasure’: is Virgin Island the most awkward TV sexperiment ever?

From left: Zac, Charlotte, Pia, Ben, Taylor, Emma, Tom, Jason, Dave, Viraj, Holly and Louise in Virgin Island.
The line up … (from left) Zac, Charlotte, Pia, Ben, Taylor, Emma, Tom, Jason, Dave, Viraj, Holly and Louise in Virgin Island. Photograph: Channel 4

Sex seems to be everywhere – in TV and films, the quagmire of porn online – but young people are increasingly not getting it in real life. The Next Steps longitudinal study following more than 16,000 people, by University College London, found that one in eight 26-year-olds still hadn’t had sex.

Hence Channel 4’s new show, Virgin Island, which depicts a two-week “radical retreat” led by sexologists Danielle Harel and Celeste Hirschman and a team of experts. The 12 participants are all virgins, and their varied issues around physical intimacy are explored via therapies that include sex coaches stripping naked and encouraging participants to pleasure them. The hope being that sex might be something they get to experience in the next fortnight.

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