Xuenou > Television > Channel 4's smut obsession reaches a new low with the bizarre Let's Make a Love Scene
Channel 4's smut obsession reaches a new low with the bizarre Let's Make a Love Scene
This cringe-worthy new dating show puts singletons' chemistry to the test as they enact famous sex scenes from Hollywood classics

Channel 4's smut obsession reaches a new low with the bizarre Let's Make a Love Scene

If you thought TV dating shows had nowhere left to go, you’d be right. Still, here is Let’s Make a Love Scene (Channel 4), the most ill-conceived programme idea since Prince Edward dreamt up It’s a Royal Knockout.

Three women volunteer to recreate sex scenes from famous films – 9½ Weeks, Mr & Mrs Smith, Out of Sight – with a man they’ve never met before. The point of this, according to presenter Ellie Taylor, is to test whether or not “an on-screen showmance can turn into a real-life romance”. The couples are guided on set by an acting coach and an intimacy coordinator.

Excuse me, what? The job of intimacy coordinators is to make actors feel safe and comfortable, and to make the film set a well-regulated workplace environment. Here, their role was to engineer a scene which would, the programme hoped, result in two people copping off with each other afterwards.

The concept is awful, and the execution is worse. Every moment had me cringing to my boots, from the scenes themselves to the point afterwards at which Taylor watched them back, popcorn in hand: “Ooh, that’s full on, isn’t it? You’re properly on top of her.”

The same man was used in all the scenes: Lailand, a 22-year-old aspiring rugby player who works in catering. He was paired up with three women who were “looking for love” and presumably didn’t make it onto the subs bench for Love Island.

Lailand massaged honey into the thighs of Marta from Manchester, to recreate the 9½ Weeks fridge scene. He and Trish (a self-described “cougar” in her 40s) stripped down to their underwear and wore modesty pouches while pretending to be George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight. The Mr & Mrs Smith scene involved Maisie, a Miss Great Britain contestant, following instructions from the director: “Take that T-shirt off. Go on, rip it off him!”

Lailand soon got carried away with the brief. He started making lewd remarks, which is surely the kind of behaviour that intimacy coordinators should be at pains to stamp out. But could you blame him? He was on a show marketed by Channel 4 as “steamy”, and which the broadcaster has grouped on its website with programmes called One Night Stand, Baewatch: Parental Guidance and My First Threesome. And that’s before we even get to Naked Attraction.

At the end, Lailand had to choose his favourite. It was no surprise that he plumped for Maisie: the chemistry between them was obvious from the second they met, which just proved the pointlessness of the show. They didn’t need to act out a love scene – they would have fancied each other just as much as this if they’d been tasked with regrouting a bathroom.