Sexy Beasts is the new dating show from Netflix that revels in its weirdness. Taking inspiration from The Masked Singer, this is The Masked Singletons. Four young people looking for love are masked up with professional prosthetics, wigs, hairpieces and stage make-up as thick as your palm. Looking for love, they’re sent off on a series of dates in locations straight out of Richard Curtis’ films. Look closely and you might find Hugh Grant stuttering winsomely at some lucky lady.
In episode one we meet Emma the demon who is covered in red make-up accessorised with horns on both her head and her chin, which feels like overkill to me. In real life she’s a model from New York, tired of being judged on looks alone, and looking for someone to get to know her beyond surface level. I mean it’s a nice problem to have, if a dating show needs to put in work to make you look uglier. The posing and posturing in the edit made me certain that the contestants must all be 100% American frat boys, but no. Two of her suitors are British. That’s Gloucster lad Archie the stone man (the moss growing around his ear is a nice touch) and Adam the Brummie mouse. Bennett the baboon is the only American guy in Emma’s threesome.
Emma has three speed dates with the beastly suitors in a lovely London bar. There’s no real chance of interesting free-flowing conversation like in Channel Four’s excellent First Dates as the editing here is very choppy and the whole show feels rushed. Emma says her men need to step up and open up to her more about what they’re really like, but they’ve not really had chance to say anything. Maybe she’s just as confused as we are.
At this point Emma has to send one man home. Despite the 100% appealing offer of a date “getting smashed” in a “dirty little Birmingham pub” Emma chooses to send Adam the mouse home. He de-masks and Emma and his competitors get to see his real face which is quite combative and all very awkward.
The location fixers had fun, with a stately home used as base camp, and a fancy-looking health spa and a theme park for the ‘proper’ dates. The two remaining beasts get to spend some proper quality time flirting with Emma and trying to impress her. Bennet is her first choice by a long margin, and we get to see them bump rubber as they try to kiss in masks.
Rod Delaney (whose voice I did not recognise) is the warm and slightly sarcastic narrator ready with gentle snark to puncture all the boastful self-publicists. But God bless the guy in the trailer who, asked about his priorities in a partner, says “Ass first, looks second”. What an icon. May he get exactly the high-quality ass of his dreams.
So many of these types of shows portray their contestants as superficial and bland, with everyone in the same sort of outfits, with the same haircuts, tans, sculpted bods, and cheesy pick-up lines. The people themselves are forgettable; they’re so generic. I suspect this isn’t just hot young things on TV and people more generally want to fit a certain very prescriptive mold when dating; to be conventionally attractive and always on best behaviour. At least this way the masks make people stand out, for the viewer at least, and perhaps even leveling the playing field slightly between extrovert model types and shyer more introverted people. I hope we see a bit more of that in this series, and it’s not wall-to-wall over-confident people.
But really, no deep questions are asked or answered. Any moral message about substance over surface is completely lost beneath the layers of prosthetic. It’s just a silly bit of superficial summer fun designed to be served with popcorn on a Saturday night after you’ve turned your brain off. As to whether I’ll watch the rest, I don’t know. But best of luck and Godspeed to Mr Ass Man. May the booty be ever in his favour.
The whole first series of Sexy Beasts is on Netflix now, to see you through the weekend.
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