Sex Box USA: It’s even worse than what it says on the can

“I RECKON to fix the problems in our relationship, we should have sex. In a box. In front of a live audience.”

Thinking outside the box: Sex Box USAcouple Elle and Brandon emerge from the box. Picture: SBS

REVIEW

“HONEY, I reckon to fix the problems in our relationship, we should have sex. In a box. In front of a live audience.” Said no one. Ever.

Until Sex Box — a TV show which Australia has endured once already, and, defying any semblance of good sense, will be inflicted on us again in its US incarnation from Sunday.

In a reality TV year in which Australian audiences have argued their way through controversial Seven Year Switch and Married at First Sight, mock-cringed over First Dates, said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to watching blindfolded strangers snog in Kiss, Bang, Love and now wait to watch singles crash and burn on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, Sex Box USA hits a whole new reality relationship/social experiment low.

If you blinked and missed the UK version a couple of years ago, Sex Box is worse than what it says on the can.

Couples with relationship dramas appear on the talk-show style format, where a panel of sex and relationship experts chat with them about the dramas.

Hard to ignore, but soundproof: The Sex Box. Picture: SBS

The couple is dispatched to have sex in a box — which looks like half a shipping container — while the live audience shoots the breeze, watches the timer and the panel of sexperts try to give it all some semblance of respectability by talking about relationships and healing and whether the troubled couple can save their partnership.

The box is soundproof and you can’t see in. But the fact that it’s smack bang on the stage means there’s no ignoring the rather large (mating) elephant in the room.

In the US version, there seems no shortage of couples willing to overshare and build the faux drama all the way to 15 seconds of fame.

By the time they emerge to cheers from the audience, having done the deed and donned a little silky something from the selection of “intimate apparel” available in the Sex Box, you think it can’t get worse. Then it does.

Couple counsellors: Sex Box USA panel of pastor and psychologist Dr Yvonne Capehart, sex therapist Dr Chris Donaghue, and relationship therapist Dr Fran Walfish. Picture: SBS

We cut now to the premise. Apparently, post sex, couples are at their most honest and prepared to listen, thanks to that magic love hormone (repeat after sex therapist Dr Chris Donaghue: “oxytocin”), which leaves them “vulnerable”.

Like sitting on stage in ill-fitting silk PJs in front of a bunch of people who travelled from their homes to sit in a studio audience to wait while you did the wild thing and then listen to you tell them about it doesn’t already.

That doesn’t seem to unduly bother Elle and Brandon (at first their sex life was “public and theatrical, now it’s not”), Alexia and Christopher (she gave him a blow job while in labour) or Rebecca and Dyson (he’d like another woman to be with them full-time, she thinks maybe that’s not wise because of their young kids).

There are disclosures including how long the couples spent in the sex box (from 17 minutes, 29 seconds to 31 minutes, 49 seconds — cue audience applause) and way too much detail on angles, techniques and who orgasmed first.

The “ground-breaking relationship-saving experience” even features a MasterChef-style card-scoring element where couples rate their own, and each other’s performance.

The experts steer the couples towards a “resolution” and it’s on to saving another relationship, one Sex Box session at a time.

Sex may sell, but it didn’t in the US, where the show was canned because of poor ratings after five of its nine episodes aired.

In the only thing vaguely appropriate for its Australian premiere, it’s buried on SBS2 in a Sunday 10.20pm timeslot.

Brandon and Elle fill out their scorecards. Picture: SBS

Originally published as Sex Box USA: It’s even worse than what it says on the can