Channel 4’s Virgin Island, it's first episode airing last night [14/05/25], is a televisual abomination so shamelessly grotesque it makes one long for the refined elegance of a public flogging. This is not a programme but a crime against decency, a lurid pantomime where human vulnerability is fed into a woodchipper of crass sensationalism for the amusement of viewers who’d rather ogle strangers’ misery than scrape the mould off their own fridge shelves.
Picture twelve adult virgins—yes, virgins, a word the show swings like a croquet mallet to ensure no brain cell goes unbludgeoned—shipped to a Croatian island for an “intimacy course.” One might, in a fleeting fit of optimism, expect tender explorations of emotional connection. But this is Channel 4, where “intimacy” means shoving fragile souls into a gladiatorial arena of sexual stunts, psychological stripteases, and public shaming, all to keep the nation’s sofa-bound voyeurs from switching to reruns of QI on Dave.
The premise, if one can call this cynical grift a premise, is a masterwork of exploitative alchemy: gather a dozen young people, mostly in their twenties, who’ve yet to punch their V-card, and dump them in a Mediterranean resort under the tutelage of “sexologists” Celeste Hirschman and Dr. Danielle Harel. These self-proclaimed oracles of the bedroom, armed with credentials from the Somatica Institute—a name that sounds like a knockoff energy drink peddled on late-night TV—promise to guide their charges to erotic enlightenment via “experiential practices.”
In reality, this means a sadistic gauntlet of workshops, ranging from the merely degrading to the outright dystopian, where participants are prodded toward losing their virginity to a “sex surrogate” while cameras slaver like hyenas over a fresh kill. Nothing says “empowerment” like having your most private milestones turned into a Tuesday night circus for gawkers placing bets on who’ll “go the distance” first.
The participants, God help them, arrive with stories that could have anchored a sensitive documentary: Ben, a 30-year-old civil servant whose spreadsheet of 40-plus failed dates reads like the ledger of a cursed bureaucrat; Emma, 23, whose quiet dream of a kind and caring partner is chewed up and spat out in an exercise where she’s coerced into scribbling pornographic fan fiction for a room of strangers; Jason, whose heartfelt fantasy of fidelity is met with a therapist’s sneer that virgins “haven’t a clue,” delivered with the warmth of a parking fine.
These are real people, carrying real wounds—loneliness, body dysmorphia, past traumas—yet Virgin Island treats them like lab rats in a Skinner box, their pain repackaged as entertainment. The voiceover, oozing with the synthetic sympathy of a telemarketer, purrs, “Who will be ready to go all the way?” as if their value lies solely in a sexual transaction, while the editors gleefully stitch every stammer, blush, and tear into a montage of maximum mortification.
The workshops are a rogues’ gallery of absurdity, each with a title so ludicrous it could double as a rejected WWE move: “Up Against the Wall,” evoking a botched SWAT raid; “Fantasy Island,” where participants are bullied into penning erotica while the group nods like they’re judging a bake-off for depravity; and, in a moment that beggars belief, an exercise where they crawl on the floor, moaning like animals in a deranged safari. One half-expects the producers to issue bullwhips and pith helmets to complete the farce.
Zac, a 28-year-old delivery driver with the strut of a discount reality TV heartthrob, is the show’s anointed champion, his eagerness to shed his virginity framed as a heroic odyssey. Meanwhile, those who dare prioritize emotional intimacy—like Sarah, who suggests love might precede lust—are patronized as relics, their values flattened by the show’s steamroller agenda to “fix” them.
The show’s apologists, likely the same masterminds who thought Naked Attraction was a cultural milestone, call it a “social experiment,” waving a statistic—one in eight 26-year-olds in the UK is a virgin—like it’s the Rosetta Stone. Never mind that this might reflect complex societal shifts: social media’s funhouse mirror of self-worth, pornography’s grotesque caricature of desire, or, perish the thought, personal agency. No, Virgin Island insists virginity is a disease to be cured, preferably with a live audience and a laugh track. Its progressive posturing—“My body deserves pleasure!”—is as authentic as a knockoff Rolex, a transparent ploy to mask the exploitation of the very insecurities it claims to soothe. The participants’ bravery is undeniable, but it’s hijacked by a format that feeds on their discomfort like a tick on a wounded dog.
Channel 4, once a crucible of daring ideas, now churns out dreck that makes Celebrity Big Brother look like a Ken Burns documentary. Virgin Island is a cultural lobotomy, revealing a medium so desperate for relevance it must pimp out the emotionally fragile for clicks. The therapists, spouting jargon with the gravitas of horoscope writers, come off less as counsellors than as cult recruiters, urging their flock to “embrace desire” while the cameras ensure no flicker of doubt escapes capture. The producers, one imagines, cackle in their chrome-plated boardrooms, toasting their manufactured outrage, fully aware that scandal is just ratings with better PR. The participants, meanwhile, are left to sweep up the shards of their dignity, their private struggles now a public punchline for water-cooler sniggers and X threads.
This is television as ethical collapse, a show that mistakes shock for substance and voyeurism for revelation. It’s the kind of programme that makes you want to smash your TV with a cricket bat, torch your Wi-Fi router, and flee to a cave where the only entertainment is counting stalactites.
Watch Virgin Island if you must, but arm yourself with a blindfold to shield your eyes, earplugs to muffle the drivel, and a bucket to catch the remnants of your faith in humanity. Better yet, knit a scarf, learn the accordion, or stare into the void—anything to escape this rancid monument to a culture that’s traded shame for a spotlight and forgotten how to recoil.