Adam Looking for Eve

 

Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to put European singles naked on a Pacific island?

I spent most of the hour watching Adam Looking for Eve worrying about the pink sunburn on the young Dutch participants sizzling under the sun on the island of Mogo Mogo, Panama. Yes, I noticed they were starkers too, but won’t somebody think of the UV rays?

This is one of several naked dating shows to have emerged in recent years, but unlike Dating Naked, there is no pixellation here. Cheeky SBS, which has never shied away from the full monty, is happy to screen this in its naughty Friday slot.

In the first episode Kathy rows a raft into a tropical beach, strips off and awaits her perfect partner. She’s a little apprehensive about getting naked.

“I hope it will be like a sauna where you check everything out first and then you get used to it,” she admits.

But Jorrit Pieter, aka ‘JP’ is without fear. He’s ready to be buff, meet the girl of his dreams and maybe one day tell his children how “Daddy met mummy naked on an island.”

The first face to face meeting, accompanied by dramatic Jaws-like music, is suitably awkward.

“I kept telling myself ‘Don’t look down, don’t look down!’ but I did,” admits Kathy. It’s ok, I think he did first.

While the pair are indeed naked, the show at least spares us close-ups that would include genitalia. It’s all there in wide-shot -if sometimes hidden by good ol’ SBS subtitles- so there’s really no need to take it further.

As the episode unfolds we see the pair get to know one another, setting up camp, fishing, learning about their shared love of techno music. It’s all going swimmingly until Rolf, a third naked Dutchie, washes up on the beach.

Rolf is here to win Kathy’s affections too, interjecting into this tropical paradise at the behest of sneaky Reality producers. Yet Kathy and JP are happy to welcome him in all his nakedness. Obvious questions about who has the bigger manhood are avoided.

As the show struggles for conflict the two men are tested with a cocktail challenge (see how I avoided a bad pun?), with the winner scoring a one-on-one date with Kathy.

By the end of a very long hour, she decides which penis, I mean, man she wants to continue seeing. I guess she forgot the show is called Adam Looking for Eve, not Eve Looking for Adam, but episode two which features one guy and two women, but no fantasy threesome.

At 60 minutes this show is too long and too thin on content. There are even recaps about nothing. It relies too heavily on its novelty of full frontal nudity, which after ten minutes is a novelty no more. I suspect none of this will stop it from rating for SBS 2, but it lacks the humour of the cult series If You Are the One.

Truth be told, you’re probably better off just spending the same hour with some decent porn than a boring perve-fest. Not something I expected to be writing in a TV review.

Adam Looking for Eve airs 8:30pm Friday on SBS 2.