REVIEW: ‘Sexy Beasts’ Is One of the Worst Things I’ve Seen

Sexy Beasts, a Netflix Original series, lit up the internet when it was announced: what couldn’t be fun about a dating show where the contestants where impressive prosthetic costumes that make them look like all sorts of creatures, animals, and monsters. They are there to vie for love beyond the surface of physical attraction. Well, there’s nothing to love about this show. It’s not enjoyable for what it’s meant to be, and it’s not enjoyable as something to make fun of. It’s simply terrible.

There are two kinds of reality shows: the ones you love to hate and the ones you hate to love. I enjoy quite my share of both. Not every show is enjoyable because it’s filled with emotional beats or lovable characters. Sometimes you hate their guts. Sometimes you are embarrassed on the contestants’ behalves for how they behave on the show. But you still enjoy that anyway, because it’s part of the fun. Sexy Beasts is a show filled with deeply unlikable people doing absolutely nothing worth watching them do.

Each episode features one person looking for love, and three possible suitors. In the first round, the one person sits and sips drinks with each of the three possible partners one at a time while they make small talk. Afterward, one is immediately eliminated based on first impressions alone. That person’s mask is lifted and everyone gets to ogle over what they really look like. Then the contestants go on longer dates that include some kind of activity and more drinks before a winner is chosen, everyone is unmasked, and the happy new couple goes and smooches.

In theory, it’s totally a fun formula. But between terrible editing, astoundingly poor casting, and a horribly mixed message, there’s virtually nothing to enjoy. The principal aspect of the show, that the people on it go on dates where they’re meant to get to know one another on a deeper level and not just via their physicality, is ruined by editing that only offers seconds at a time of said dates before interrupting them constantly with commentary. The show constantly is cutting through conversations, that aren’t particularly interesting as it is, to have the narrator make some terrible jokes. It keeps the conceit of the show from even being fully realized.

Speaking of the narrator, he may single-handedly have ruined the show in just the first few minutes I turned it on. He’s droll, unfunny, and an absolute mismatch of a voice and tone for the show this could have been. Everything he says is uninspired, which is surely a script writer’s fault more than his, but it’s also delivered in the least enthusiastic way imaginable. It’s almost like putting a Great British Bake Off narrator in a dating show, but with none of the wit or charm.

The poor casting extends to basically every contestant as well. Most of them are uninteresting, weird, or outright annoying. While a few are, I’m sure, pleasant, and occasionally one wouldn’t be too irritating, I can’t believe that a show based specifically on forming attraction and connection through personality alone would go and cast people with such dreary or annoying personalities. If I can’t root for people based on their hotness, I would like to at least enjoy their personalities. Perhaps the editing also made this worse as well, where inklings of personality are just, again, constantly truncated by the narrator’s banter or cuts to new conversations.

Lastly, the show is entirely hypocritical. It poses as a show about how looks aren’t everything and that it’s great to make other kinds of connections. But then it casts people who are most interested in how people look and makes the most critical part of the whole show about when the contestants de-mask and whether they’ll think each other are hot or not. I have no problem with people wanting to date hot people. But not a single one of the contestants wasn’t conventionally attractive. There were no moments of “wow, this person is actually not physically attractive to me, but their personality was, so we should date anyway.” And while perhaps that was never the point the show intended to make, it’s certainly how it is both marketed and how it introduces itself every episode. Also, it’s 2021. Have some visibly not-heterosexual contestants, please.

The singular reason this review receives any points is because the prosthetics are, mostly, impressive. While some (looking at you, creepy dolphin) were misses, I do think many of them were hits, including a dear, a demon, and a god, or something like that. Many were heads straight out of a costume shop though, which felt weird next to the ones that clearly took hours. If you’re going to make a show about people in costumes please go all out on the costumes. Please,

Sexy Beasts could have had it all. A great name. A great concept. But nope. It was squandered on terrible editing, very poor casting, and a complete mockery of its own conceit. It’s not even fun to hate-watch. Just don’t bother.

Sexy Beasts is streaming now on Netflix.