Some people claim that the current proliferation of streaming services is bad for television, that this frantic scramble for subscribers will result in a gruesome and grubby race to the bottom. I don’t want to say that those people are right, but then again Peacock just made a pilot for a new reality show called Sex in the Dark.
According to Deadline, Sex in the Dark is a “raunchy social experiment” where a blindfolded person embarks on “intimacy tests to judge their connection, chemistry and attraction with a number of different suitors. The show culminates in a final night in complete darkness, as the singleton bed-hops with the remaining suitors to see if smell, touch, physical connection and energy is all you need to fall in love.”
Before we get to the format itself, remember when the phrase “social experiment” actually meant something? Remember when it was educational, rooted in a genuine desire to see what happens to the human collective when exposed to new situations and behaviours, rather than an excuse to watch a bunch of fame-hungry nobodies bone each other through night-vision goggles? No, you’re right, me neither.
Sex in the Dark doesn’t sound entirely dissimilar to Dating in the Dark, a UK reality show that aired on Sky Living in 2009. If it even shares a trace or core DNA with that show, then we should probably all brace ourselves for the worst. In Dating in the Dark, couples matched with each other in pitch-black rooms, slowly building what seemed like an unbreakable emotional connection, before the producers slammed the house lights on and – often to their tangible disgust – they realised that they had unwittingly been falling in love with an ugly person. The moral of Dating in the Dark was that, despite what you might think, it is definitely what’s on the outside that counts. It was the concept of cruelty made flesh.
And that was just a show about dating. Sex in the Dark, with all the title implies, sounds even worse. Maybe they’ll flick the lights on mid-pump, and the contestants will realise they’re surrounded by mirrors, and they’ll be assaulted by their own mid-coital reflection and it’ll traumatise them forever.
Anyway, Sex in the Dark doesn’t just sound awful – although it really does sound incredibly awful, like the sort of too-obvious parody reality show they’d invent for a futuristic satire about the days after the fall of civilisation – but it might just offer a hint at the direction in which television is heading.
The WGA strikes are going to change how we view television. In the short term, it means no Saturday Night Live or late-night talkshows. In the medium term, we might see a pronounced drop in quality in our filmed media, like when Daniel Craig blamed the borderline-unwatchable misfire Quantum of Solace on its lack of a decent script, which was a direct result of the previous WGA strike of 2007-08. But in the longer term, the deeper issues surrounding the treatment of writers might cause platforms to turn away from expensive, buzzy, little-watched prestige drama in favour of something cheaper, crasser and unscripted. And God knows that’s exactly what Sex in the Dark is.
Shows like this exist for no other reason than blunt titillation. Obviously nobody has seen Sex in the Dark yet but, at least judging by Deadline’s description, it essentially sounds like televised dogging. And not to be indelicate, but if we really wanted to watch a bunch of strangers grope and sniff each other under an artificial veil of intimacy, don’t we already have 90% of the internet for that?
The scariest thing is that it might work. People might furtively buy Peacock subscriptions just to watch Sex in the Dark. In the absence of good new dramas, it might become the breakout hit of the year. It might be the sort of show that people discuss in the street. It might be heralded as the new Apprentice. And then one of the contestants might gain so much semi-ironic celebrity from their time that they run for president and win, and they’ll be inaugurated blindfolded, as they’re openly groped by their peers, and then that’ll be something we all just have to learn to live with. What I guess I’m trying to say is that people need to pay their writers.