Channel 4’s Virgin Island is back, sending 12 adult virgins to Croatia for a three-week intimacy retreat built around sex therapists and professional surrogate partners. The second series again follows participants as they try to tune in to their desires, expose their bodies and experience sensual touch.
Series one became Channel 4’s most successful unscripted launch since records began, and the new run arrives with the same unusual premise: a reality format focused on sexual anxiety and intimacy issues rather than competition. That matters because the show has grown where most unscripted television falters, by treating vulnerability as the point, not the spectacle.
This series brings together people whose stories are specific rather than generic. Bertie is 24 and autistic. Alex is 28 and believes he has erectile dysfunction. Will, 30, has experienced premature ejaculation. Callum, 21, spends an average of 16 hours a day gaming since losing his father. Joy, 22, cannot shake the association between sex and sin from her Christian upbringing, and at one point believed the vaginismus she struggles with was a curse from God.
The format is built around kindness and acceptance, and that is what separates it from most reality TV. The contestants are described as unlike the usual crop of narcissists or desperate attention-seekers, and the series is said to be neither graphic nor explicit, nor tawdry or tasteless. Even in its first run, the treatment could extend to penetrative sex, but the show’s appeal appears to lie in how carefully it handles something many people avoid talking about at all.
That is why the return on Channel 4 matters now. The first series proved there was an audience for television that takes sex, shame and confidence seriously without turning them into a contest. The new season tests whether that audience is still there, and whether a programme built on empathy can keep drawing viewers in a crowded reality TV market.
