THIS week Channel 4 launches a reality show in which ‘couples consider abandoning monogamy’. According to the Express, the prospect of the programme, Open House: The Great Sex Experiment, has ‘appalled pro-family campaigners and comes as the Government considers whether to privatise the publicly owned but commercially funded broadcaster’.
Ex-Welsh Secretary and former Brexit minister David Jones commented: ‘Channel 4 has been pursuing a vigorous campaign against the Government’s proposals for its future and to maintain the status quo. This programme illustrates very well why so many people think it needs to be changed . . . Channel 4 needs urgent reform, otherwise it should be abolished.’
He said the ‘experiment’ is ‘nothing more than a return to 1970s-style sexploitation, appealing to the prurient and serving a lowest-common-denominator audience’.
Unfortunately, coming hot on the heels of offerings including the ‘daring dating series’ Naked Attraction, in which contestants bare their all, it seems the ‘sexploitation’ barrel has been well and truly scraped. If this latest instalment in the Channel 4 series See How Edgy We Are really represented a return to the 1970s, we could at least look forward to a few laughs with a Benny Hill-style comedy, Hattie Jacques and Sid James in a Carry On movie, or Brian Rix losing his trousers in a Whitehall farce. Sadly, however, the first episode of Open House sounds suitably woke and dreary, featuring ‘Welsh couple Maddy and Nathan’, who ‘are interested in bringing another woman into their relationship’. We are assured by Channel 4 that ‘relationship coaches’ and a ‘sex therapist’ will be on hand to ‘assist’ them as ‘the couples embark on a series of intimate challenges to road-test if the idea of having sex with other people is at odds with maintaining a committed relationship’.
According to a Government spokesman, no decisions about the future of the channel have been made, but this latest offering will hardly help Channel 4’s case for the status quo. Surely they must have heard of the tragic suicides of participants in ‘reality’ TV shows, totalling 38 in 2019 and including a participant in the Jeremy Kyle Show, prompting the Government to set up an inquiry into this appalling phenomenon.
So although Channel 4 prides itself on pushing the boundaries, this particular boundary is nothing new, and has already been pushed to destruction – not least the destruction of some of the individuals involved. More insidiously, couple by couple and family by family, such ‘entertainment’ is helping to destroy societies.
In our post-Christian society, virtue has become boring but sin has become even more boring, with mutual betrayal planned and agreed upon by ‘consenting’ adults. A really counter-cultural ‘reality show’ would acknowledge the purpose of the sexual act: to produce new human beings. That would really revolutionise relationships – and there would be no room whatsoever for boredom to creep in.
However, in a society that has airbrushed children out of the sex act, it was inevitable that instead of expanding the monogamous relationship by the addition of babies, attempts would be made to banish the ‘boredom’ of monogamous relationships by the addition of extra participants. But an ‘open relationship’ is indeed like an ‘open house’ – a house without walls and a roof, i.e. not a relationship at all, with nothing to protect against the chill winds of reality. We can hardly expect this ‘reality show’ to show any reality; rather it will act as a shop window for alternative lifestyles, pandering to the very worst instincts of the lowest common denominator, and the dirtiest of minds.
Perhaps the really dirty trick is that this not-so-new ‘sexperiment’ is being subsidised from the compulsory licence fee – an excellent reason for doing away with this tax on all viewers, even those who would rather watch paint dry than waste an hour of their life on dross dressed up as science. We can boycott the companies that advertise on the channel, but we cannot boycott this compulsory tax. So we are having to bankroll this ‘sexperiment’ on Channel Filth.
