Virgin School
As a piece of scheduling it is pretty much par for the course for Channel 4, yet somehow next year’s The Virgin School still manages to beggar the belief of our favourite smut campaigner, John Beyer of Mediawatch-UK.
It follows the fortunes of a man in his late twenties, still a virgin, as he enrols in a three-month sex course in Amsterdam where he eventually pops his cherry with a sex therapist.
According to a Channel 4 spokesman it is “a sensitive documentary that follows one young man’s effort to overcome a major obstacle in his life.” But it’s about sex, so Beyer, who is quite possibly not a virgin himself, is outraged:
It beggars belief. It’s yet another example of them trying to attract viewers with a programme about sex. It is really time that Channel 4 grew up,
said the wise and mature Christian from Ashford who, it must be said, does rather seem so caught up in his own importance that he really can’t see… Oh, wait…
They are so caught up in their own importance that they really can’t see beyond their own quest for sensationalism and controversy.
Not for the first time.
(From The Daily Mail)
Some would say that an adult who spends his life groaning in scandalized shock at anything to do with sex on TV is the one who needs to “grow up.”
It’s a little sad that humanity’s morales make this something worth putting on tv. Quite frankly I think it’s a little sad that there’s so much controversy over a show which sounds so trivial. The even sadder point is that by attacking it, these critics will just increase the ammount of people watching it. Heck, I would never have heard of it if it hadn’t been in a newspaper. Now I want to see it just to see if it’s really as bad as the critics are saying it is, though I’ll probs never get round to it.
In all honesty though I see no point to a programme like this, it just seems like C4 trying to push what they can get away with to create this sort of effect to increase viewers. It’s not a serious programme, it’s a marketing tool.
MavsWorld – I agree. It’s a bit sad that there’s no voice in the media for people who want quality television (and by “quality television” I mean “television which is genuinely thought-provoking and intelligent”, rather than “television where no-one says fuck and married couples can only be seen in bed if they have one foot on the floor”, which some people seem to have rather oddly defined it as).
On the one hand you have people like Beyer, whose idiocy needs no introduction on this site. On the other you have cunts like Russell T Davies and Mark Lawson, telling us that if you don’t find Channel 4’s new line-up of reality crap to be the most entertaining and meaningful programming in the history of the medium then you’re a snob who hates the working classes (you know, those funny smelly people who neither Davies nor Lawson have ever actually met a member of). I wish there was some way we could shut both sides up…
Graham,
Although I agree with your general premise, I think that you are a bit harsh on Lawson, I’d just up him down as a pompous twat.
Fair enough – you have to observe a proper swearatological protocol in instances like this.