Sexy Beasts takes deep dive into shallowness comes up comically short

Sexy Beasts, Netflix ★★½
(★★ for Rob Delaney’s narration, ½ for the make-up)

Has the gap between premise and product ever been quite so yawning as it is with Sexy Beasts, Netflix’s latest foray into the reality dating space?

The show features “real-life singles” who are “hoping to say goodbye to superficial dating”. The kicker is the elaborate make-up and prosthetics that convert them into a cross between alien life forms and animals. The alleged pay-off is the promise that subjecting themselves to more face paint than you’ll find at your average fifth birthday party will allow them to “put true blind-date chemistry to the test”.

Emma, a 21-year-old model, is looking for love in episode 1 of Sexy Beasts. Credit:Netflix

Yeah, whatever. In truth, the show’s attitude is best summed up by James, the himbo star of the second episode, who comes dressed as a beaver, and misses no opportunity to propose a “beaver kiss” to each of his three dates (a pixie, a leopard and a zombie). “Arse first, personality second,” is how he ranks his priorities.

Basically, it’s The Masked Schlonger.

Netflix characterises this deep dive into shallowness as “goofy, romantic”. It’s right on half of that at least.

Watching Sexy Beasts is like crashing a series of Tinder dates where everyone has been forced to use animal face filters on their profile pics, only to find the wind has changed direction and they’re stuck with them forever. Or at least until the moment the bachelor/ette swipes left, which is the cue for the rejected to reveal their true self (NB: only hot people need apply).

And that is in turn the cue for deep regret. There’s so much yearning for conversational roads left untravelled it hurts.

Oh wait, no there isn’t. It’s all and only about how hawt the one that got away is.

Let’s go back to Beaverman James, as he celebrates the choice he’s made in hooking up with Alexis the leopard (and I am absolutely not going to apologise for any spoilers here; if you invest in this “journey” you have only yourself to blame).

“This experience has taught me don’t look at an arse and a face and automatically think, ‘She’s about to have a great personality’,” he says. He may have some regrets about having ditched pixie-girl Amber and zombie Tamiko, but he’s absolutely committed to trying to make it work with Alexis, because that’s what these reality dating shows are all about, right, the search for true and everlasting love.

“But if that doesn’t work out, I definitely am going to hit up Tamiko.”

All the usual rituals of the reality dating genre are here â€" awkward first dates, “romantic” second dates where the couple get to know each other a little better, a mansion, a ceremony of rejection, a garden with flower-covered trellises where troths are pledged (for the night anyway). It’s performative romance, the heart-shaped equivalent of pornography.

Can a mantis and dolphin find true love on a reality show? What do you reckon? Credit:Netflix

Shallow though this antidote to shallowness is, it does have some saving graces. The make-up is quite spectacular, and the narration â€" by Catastrophe’s Rob Delaney â€" is often very funny.

“This might be grossing you out,” he says over footage of a couple getting an oily foot massage. “But there are a bunch of foot fetishists out there who are losing our mi … their minds right now. This one’s for you, feet freaks.”

Maybe that’s the best way to approach Sexy Beasts â€" as a comedy about the ridiculousness of reality dating shows, the pointlessness of looking for love in front of a camera, the empty claim that looks don’t matter on a medium that depends entirely on visuals.

Karl Quinn is a senior culture writer at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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