Naked Attraction has been airing since 2016 on England’s Channel 4, but the first six seasons of the full-frontal-filled dating show are now available to American audiences on Max. The premise is simple: a dater chooses from a field of potential partners who they want to go on a date with. The criteria for how the decide? The naked bodies of their potential mates are revealed – from the feet up – until they decide which naked body they’re most attracted to.
Opening Shot: A montage of singles explain how difficult modern dating, especially online dating, is these days. “What would happen if we were stripped of all the things that usually define us?” host Anna Richardson then asks.
The Gist: Naked Attraction bills itself as “dating in reverse.” Rather than beginning a date fully clothed and ending up naked, a contestant chooses from a pool of six naked people, judging them from the feet up and slowly narrowing the dating pool to two final choices. Before selecting who they’ll go on a (fully clothed) date with to actually get to know them, the contestant disrobes and, in the interest of fairness, their own body is sized up.
In every episode, there are two rounds of this. In the pilot, we meet host Anna Richardson, who is equal parts knowledgeable and funny, and is just as skilled as making jokes about dangly bits as she is at giving historical and biological context for habits of human attraction. We also meet Aina, a woman who has been unlucky in love and has to judge the bodies and bums, penises and pecks, of six men she might want to date. As she analyzes them, she comments on liking full lips and round bums, and penises with girth rather than length. There’s no body-related topic that’s off-limits during this selection process, and all the contestants are fine with that, this is what they signed up for.
As she narrows down the dating pool, each man is given an exit interview which ranges from disappointed to the good, defensive old “I didn’t want to date her anyway!” until she finally selects one mate and goes on a date with him.
We also meet Mal, a bisexual woman whose dating pool consists of men and women, an interesting and welcome twist on the formula. Thankfully, the show offers the one thing many other dating shows don’t, which is a follow up. After the couple’s initial date, they’re interviewed one month later to see if they’re still going strong and if naked selection worked for them. For Aina and her date, Matty, the match seems to be a success. For Mal and her chosen one, Rebecca, they appear to have had a great time but are more interested in friendship than romance.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The VH1 dating show Dating Naked only ran for a few short seasons before it was canceled, but the premise of that American series was the same as Naked Attraction. The one MAJOR difference was that Dating Naked aired on basic cable and entirely blurred everyone’s naughty bits. Here, there is nothing left to the imagination.
Our Take: The thing about shows with nude contestants like Naked and Afraid, and Dating Naked is that after a while we become desensitized to the sight of penises and vulvas in plain sight. Once you see a naked person crouching down to start a campfire or strap into a zipline harness (a common sight on Dating Naked, a show I watched a lot of back in the day), you stop caring about what everything looks like and your thoughts turn solely to chafing. Naked Attraction is no different.
On Naked Attraction, as the privacy screens of the potential daters in the pilot episode are removed and six dangly penises confront us head on, there’s a moment of voyeurism for sure, but it’s far less about judging penis size or shape and much more about the lives these people have led. In any other situation, a man’s prosthetic leg might be the most interesting thing about him, but here, this man’s prosthetic leg takes a backseat to his elephant tattoo, where his well-endowed penis is the trunk. (If you really must see an uncensored version of this for yourself, you are absolutely welcome to click here.)
As body parts are revealed, the contestants showing them off are not allowed to speak, but they do manage to show off their personalities in other ways, flexing their muscles, flicking nipples, and even contracting their ball sacks by doing man-Kegels (all of this lingo is 100% scientific) as an alternative to tipping one’s cap to the nice lady.
But the shows seeks to do more than just titillate with gratuitous nudity, as its outraged, puritanical detractors might have you believe. Interspersed throughout the show are segments that explain biology – how and why we have evolved to prefer certain body types, how our bodies function sexually, and why pubes are a good thing – which serve to reverse the raunch factor. In the same way that Selling The O.C. is a soap opera under the guise of a real estate show, Naked Attraction is a human interest show where we learn about sex and bodies that’s disguised as a dating series. It is a celebration of the fact that there is no such thing as a “normal” body type and it normalizes the things that people might feel self-conscious about. Big bellies, an abundance of moles, and hairy nethers are all discussed frankly and without much judgment; who ends up with whom is less important.
Sex and Skin: ‘Taint for the faint, the labia majority of this show is a revulving door filled with uncut gems.
Parting Shot: Mal and her date, Rebecca, sit side by side on a couch after their date. “We’ve all got a naked body at the end of the day, and no one’s is perfect,” Rebeccas says. “”Might as well embrace it and enjoy it,” Mal adds.
Memorable Dialogue: “Aina absolutely loved your bouncy balls, but on this occasion, it’s a no,” Richardson tells one contestant who was eliminated from the dating pool. Your balls were too pitchy, dawg.
Our Call: STREAM IT! Naked Attraction will definitely not be for everyone (while the show does a good job with positively messaging bodies, it’s still definitely not for kids or people who don’t like sexual content, as there are plenty of blunt sex jokes and anecdotes about past sexual experiences throughout), but it’s an entertaining and at times educational spin on a matchmaking show.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.