Guilty Pleasures TV – Below Deck Down Under & Virgin Island

Below Deck Down Under

Let’s talk about islands, or at least distant places where the waterline is visible on waking, and sand, softer than a grainy sandwich in Margate, is a footstep from your bed.

The Below Deck Series – a real Titan of streamed TV from Bravo – gives audiences well curated pieces of this dream while also delivering a family of young adults who have thrown caution to the wind and fully invested in it. For so many, the prospect of leaving familiarity behind to be captive on a boat with strangers for a six-week season, would be intimidating, but for these intrepid magic seekers, this risk is a way of life. Compellingly, we also learn the reasons why many of them are running away from places they call home.

The exuberant energy and enthusiasm that each deckhand and stewardess brings is the stuff of gap years and their ability to move fluidly through decisions about where to live, work and play next is frankly, awe-inspiring. Although, this is perhaps reflective of the enormous tips they receive from the athletes, realters, tech entrepreneurs and porn-stars that debunk to their super yacht for six weeks each summer. We all need a dose of this freedom.

As always, that potent formula of putting attractive people in proximity for a finite period of time drags more than a few pieces of dramatic wreckage from the seabed.

Having just finished Season Three of Below Deck Down Under on Hayu, I can attest to a delightful spattering of drifts and rifts this season, with some tried and tested narratives serving-up a feast from below sea level. Unusually, this time, the ‘will they won’t they’ story doesn’t belong to a charming new couple in the throes of putting a label on it (or not), but to a female friendship.

The trials and tribulations of Chef, Tzarina, and Chief Stewardess, Lara’s, relationship took us back to high school as ‘Chefy’ shared her insecurities around acceptance and ‘mean girls’ with the camera crew while Lara persisted in bitching about her to her subordinates until the bitter end.

Tears are spilled over mismatched desire among the club 18-35 crew in Season 3, but also, unconventionally, there are success stories – Model Bri, and Lead Deck Hand, Harry embark on a genuinely sweet courtship that sees their mutual ganglyness and goofy sense of humour entangled in cabins and a sunset moment in which they agree to be ‘exclusive partners.’ There is also a rather Shakespearean secondary mirroring of this in the coupling of posh English deckhand Nick and pragmatic Brazilian Stewardess Marina.

All ends with emotional goodbyes to seasoned but craggily good-looking Captain Jason, who imparts words of Australian wisdom like your favourite dad on a school trip. Much can be unpacked from the camp and beautiful suitcases of this brand, and its appeal is surely more universal than that of the Mormon wives…

The prospect of photogenic adventure, the encounters with love and beauty (which are ongoing for couple Nic and Marina) and the safety of a floating workplace where rules offer a behavioural compass, mean that Below Deck is one of the most aspirational and accessible shows in the high seas of reality TV.

Reassuringly, a new season of Below Deck (the older cousin of ‘Down Under’) has graced Hayu this week. Although something is different – the cheery and cheeseful titles that pair lead personalities in musical montage in the Down Under and ‘mediteranean’ spin-offs are sadly absent. So is the tradition of filming the first tentative meetings between The Captain and the rucksacked free-spirits S/he will lead. Instead, there is a new positioning of Chief Steward, Fraser as master of ceremonies, meeting and greeting the budding dysfunctional family in an off-site bar. Boo! Also gone are the ‘preference sheet meetings’ which separate the senior team of Chef, Chief Steward, Bosun and Captain in an eye-rolling frenzy, away from their status thirsty subordinates.

These omissions probably made sense to producers refreshing the format for a new season of audiences, and they do succeed in taking Below Deck back to its grittier roots, with some very ‘green’ and unpolished housekeeping staff to boot. But they are missing a beat – return viewers come for the melodrama, yes, but also for tone. If the Below Deck brand was a musical genre, it would be  ‘beach-café music’ – that washes over you in soothing waves, as reinforced by moments of series ritual and soft cheese.

I will be watching Below Deck S12 avidly to make sure the good-ship St Martin is anchored with all the best Below Deck tropes and safety-knots!

 

Virgin Island

I approached Channel4’s Virgin Island with my back-up. How could a show built around young adults carrying such a sensitive vulnerability and source of embarrassment not be exploitative?

Surely, if the 12 game virgins signed all the waivers under the sun, these, often socially awkward, twenty-somethings couldn’t fully appreciate the level of scrutiny and exposure they were subjecting themselves to, otherwise they wouldn’t do it!? Shame on you Channel4…

However, I was pleasantly surprised. From shy Civil Servant, Ben to conservative Personal Trainer Viraj, and outwardly ballsy Charlotte, they all present as the kind of self-aware and wise-beyond-years college leavers you would want your own kid to grow into.

As we settle into the ethnic cushions of their group therapy sessions, with a tribe of sexperts in vest tops and sarongs, the nature of the experiment becomes clear. They are going to do drama games with ramped-up sexual tension, and take steps, with increasing proximity, towards having sex with a surrogate partner, in cosy bell tents…

This edges on the only truly toe-curling aspect of this series – the twenty-something’s surrogate partners, all qualified therapists and practitioners are, to be expected, a fair bit older than themselves.

Now, I’m not raining judgement on age-gap relationships between individuals where there is an equal power balance and a mutual ‘connection.’ But this isn’t about ‘connection;’ it’s about intimacy as a rite of passage on 12 virgins’ tick-lists. I couldn’t personally prevent myself from second-guessing the moments when women in the full throes of middle-age were working to arouse some of the diffident younger men with clinches and heavy breathing. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t wanted. It was just very weird, which begs the question of how much of the island therapy was ‘therapy,’ and how much was basically gentle seduction?

Yet, credit must go to the Sexperts and programme makers for weaving a better narrative than Love Island-esque voyeurism through each show. From the beginning, the therapist tribe assert that the journey they are embarking on is one of self-love and recognition of value. And while this may feel trite, the exercises in the mirror, confessions penned and, touchingly, the validation offered among the group for each other, are what makes the viewing experience worth-while and, dare I say it, didactic…It got me questioning how validated I’ve felt by those I’ve been close to – not the kind of rabbit-hole one expects to fall down on a Tuesday evening.

Regardless of surrogates and heavy breathing, it’s that old treasure ‘confidence’ that emerges as the elusive Golden Fleece the twelve Virgins seek, and like Jason’s Argonauts, they fight for it under the glare of very lazy Gods. Those speaking to the media after their time on the island seem to have hugely benefited from it…a rare reversal of fortunes for participants leaving a Reality island without a tangible prize.