I am hardly a reality TV aficionado, so pay attention to what I am about to say: there is nothing currently streaming more compelling than Virgin Island. Twelve British adults, aged from early twenties to mid-thirties, coalesce on a Croatian resort to confront their sexual hang-ups. Guided by a team of “intimacy coaches”, we watch them take their first steps towards sexual awakening. It is excruciatingly awkward, ethically questionable – as turning vulnerabilities into entertainment always is – and joyfully life affirming.
Really, it should be called “Incel Island” – these men and women baring their souls (and much more) for the cause are all involuntarily celibate. They want sex, or at the very least want to be able to want it. But numerous barriers are in their way: severe issues with body image; self-loathing; anxiety; past experiences of trauma, bullying and sexual harassment; neurodivergence that causes terror about social interactions, let alone sexual ones; guilt and shame, especially for the guests exploring their sexual orientation; a fundamental belief that no one could ever find them attractive, let alone love them.
Yet unlike the incels who have populated the manosphere, blaming women for their lack of sexual fulfilment and spiralling down a rabbit hole of vitriol, the virgins understand that change starts with them. It’s not someone else’s job to transform them into confident, competent sexual beings. They have to do that themselves.
And what’s so endearing is that they do. The shock factor of the show is the work the virgins do with their “surrogate partners”. (There is a lot of intimate touching. Last season one adventurous young man even had sex – I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for the Ofcom discussions on getting this greenlit on Channel 4.) But once you get over that, you realise it isn’t really about sex at all. Sex (or lack thereof) is just the symptom of a deeper disconnect.
One of the virgins on the latest show is unemployed and reeling from his father’s sudden death. He admits to spending 16 hours a day playing online video games. I got the impression he rarely talks to anyone face-to-face: grief and a wi-fi connection have driven him to a point of acute isolation. Others seem to lack not just opportunities for romantic potential, but also basic friendships. This is the birth-rate crisis, the rise of those not in education, employment or training (Neets) and the loneliness epidemic rolled into one.
Can you fix all of that with images of genitalia and guided lessons on masturbation? Probably not, but that’s missing the point. The cast may think it is the roleplays to which the sexologists subject them that is making the difference. But what really changes them are their interactions with each other. Through conversation, the grieving gamer grows into a really quite adorable chap that lots of women would go on a date with. The women paralysed by insecurity metamorphose into social butterflies the moment someone laughs at their jokes. Freed from the fixation that their inexperience renders them comprehensively hideous, they sparkle.
Virtually unheard of in the world of reality TV, this is a show of people who are actually there for the reason they claim. They’re not trying to win lucrative sponsorship deals or launch careers as internet celebrities. All they want is a normal sex life. That makes them not just infinitely more likeable than the egomaniac wannabe influencers who so often populate our screens, but also entrancingly relatable. Most of us will have at some point grappled with milder variants of the neuroses and social angst on display on Virgin Island. It is heartening to watch these being vanquished.
The show’s premise is that the sexual crisis that plagues this generation – with one in eight 26-year-olds still a virgin – calls for extreme measures. I took away something different: get a group of people who believe they’re social pariahs in a room together without their phones, and watch them flourish. If only the incels would take note.
[Further reading: Westminster’s WhatsApp deletion drive]
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This article appears in the 17 Jun 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The Race