Sorry to be a Disapproving Mum, but Too Hot To Handle is horrible TV
Rating: 
The Handmaid’s Tale
Channel 4, Sunday
Rating:
It would be easy to dismiss Netflix’s Too Hot To Handle so let’s do exactly that. Oh no. Oh damn. I can see the problem now. Here I am, way up here, and I can see where this review is meant to end, which is way down there. I must now fill the space with words. This is my job. And also my genius, if I’m allowed to say that.
I accept I am not the target audience for dating shows like this, or ITV’s Love Island, which returns tomorrow, but with little else playing against the football, needs must. I am mostly baffled by these shows.
With all the campaigning around mental health why is it OK to treat people as if they are not actually people, but characters in a video game who can be manipulated, humiliated and hurt for our entertainment?
Too Hot To Handle works like this: a group of super-hot, sexed-up twentysomethings are dispatched to a tropical villa and must not partake in any sexual activity in order to win $100k
And now I sound like everyone’s Disapproving Mum, but the truth is I am everyone’s Disapproving Mum. (If you don’t have a Disapproving Mum of your own, I could also be yours, if you want. My rates are most reasonable).
Too Hot To Handle works like this: a group of super-hot, sexed-up twentysomethings with ripped abs and thong-ed behinds – can Disapproving Mum just say for the record that big pants, as available from M&S, are so much more... comfortable? – are dispatched to a tropical villa.
They are, mostly, personal trainers, models and ‘social media influencers’, which, I think, means they get paid to unbox new socks and fake excitement – I think – on Instagram.
They say things like: ‘I am a man-eater.’ Or: ‘I deserve casual sex wherever and whenever I want.’ Or: ‘I’m a little firecracker.’
They’re duped into believing this will be the most heady and erotic summer of their lives but a day in, when already they’ve started coupling up and getting close – they don’t waste any time – they’re informed there will be no sexual activity whatsoever: no kissing, no touching, no sex and no, ahem, ‘self-gratification’.
There is a prize fund of $100,000 and if they break the rules, as they inevitably do, amounts will be deducted and the bigger the crime, the bigger the fine. There are cameras everywhere and they are also monitored by Lana, an Alexa-type digital assistant, who summons them to stern summits and metes out the punishments.
We are repeatedly told that this is all for the contestants’ own good, as it will help them understand relationships are about emotional intimacy rather than one-night stands.
Look at it this way, and it’s a public service. With thongs. The first three episodes of four – there are eight episodes in all but Netflix is releasing them in two tranches – were, truly, incredibly tedious. Melinda hooked up with Marvin but then Melinda broke the rules by kissing Peter, and Marvin had a sulk. Emily and Cam found it impossible to keep their hands off each other.
Meanwhile, most conversations went: ‘I’m so horny. Are you?’ ‘Yeah, I’m so horny.’ While I wanted to say: ‘If you’re long-term married, a few weeks without sex is nothing. Trust Disapproving Mum on this, get your big pants from Marks, and get a grip!’ However, it all ramped up in episode four when new contestants were introduced and Cam was immediately dispatched on a date with Christina. (‘I’ll move in for more than a kiss if I’m feeling it,’ she said).
Poor Emily, who is rather sweet, actually, and thought she was in a relationship with Cam, was genuinely heartbroken. Cam said: ‘If there is another attractive girl put in front of me I will always jump ship.’ God bless Cam and his single brain neuron. And look, now it’s made me horrible. But the show can only become more interesting by becoming more horrible, and manipulative, and that’s fine, except… is it? I thought we might get away without Disapproving Mum butting in there, but no.
The Handmaid’s Tale has returned for a fourth season and my first reaction was: What more can they put June (Elisabeth Moss, above) through? Give the poor girl a break!
The Handmaid’s Tale has returned for a fourth season and my first reaction was: What more can they put June (Elisabeth Moss) through? Can’t she just make it from Gilead to Canada and live happily ever after? Give the poor girl a break!
But here’s June having her gun wound cauterised with a hot iron – she was shot escaping though the forest, remember – while biting down on a cloth and screaming. June had been taken to a safe house where the commander’s child-wife had been multiply raped by Guardians and Eyes. Time for revenge, Aunt Lydia-style? That big knife we keep seeing isn’t going to pick up itself, is it?
This has become as grim as any violent action movie and Moss, who is usually terrific, now only deploys one expression – horrified disbelief. I can’t care any more, don’t feel anything any more, and this should be put out of its misery, like Homeland was (eventually).
Now look above. It’s full of words, right? Even in a week when there hasn’t really been anything on aside from football. That is my genius. And also, my gift to you.
