One of my last acts as Director of Digital at The Onion was to help sell our channel to YouTube in Spring 2012 when it was launching its first major investment in original content. What The Onion ended up producing (for which I can take no credit) is some of the best video that outlet has ever produced: Sex House.
The premise was a reality TV show that did away with the veil of respectability layered over shows in which young people essentially drink and have sex and fight and drink and have more sex. Rather than “exploring new cities” and “finding themselves while working on the boardwalk,” Sex House just said, “let’s put a bunch of people in a house which we’ll call Sex House, and then let’s encourage them to have sex and broadcast what happens.”
Leave it to Great Britain to create and launch a real show called Sex Box which does a lot of the same thing but with real people in real life. According to Deadline:
Provocative British reality format Sex Box is getting a U.S. adaptation. WE tv has ordered an hourlong pilot for the project from Relativity TV. In Sex Box, real couples whose relationships are on the rocks enter a soundproof box to have sex and, upon exit, immediately address their issues with a panel of experts
Yes, Sex Box is coming to America, and life is imitating art imitating life imitating art.
Thanks to Sara Benincasa for the tip about this new addition to the U.S. media landscape.
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