Netflix, on top of being a home for auteur filmmakers’ passion projects, giant blockbuster anime adaptations, and interactive game-like storytelling, is also a premiere player in the reality TV genre. And in true MTV-of-the-mid-2000s fashion, the streamers’ latest trend is all about dating competitions like Too Hot to Handle and The Circle. Their latest high-concept show promises to somehow out high-concept them all.
Much like Netflix’s other series Love Is Blind, Sexy Beasts gives contestants a new way to check their looks-based biases at the door and indulge their Cats fantasies. “Hoping to say goodbye to superficial dating,” reads Netflix’s synopsis, “real-life singles sport elaborate makeup and prosthetics to put true blind-date chemistry to the test.”
Based on a trailer for the show, that means dressing up as everything from a dolphin to a beaver to a scarecrow and even a devil that looks like Tim Curry’s Lord of Darkness from the Tom Cruise fantasy movie Legend. The thinking goes that if you can fall in love with a panda lady while dressed as a bull man, that means it’s true love. We await the furry response.
Narrated by Catastrophe star and comedian Rob Delaney, Sexy Beasts is an update of a short-lived BBC 3 reality series from 2014. In a post-Masked Singer world, probably makes a lot more sense now. At least on paper.
Sexy Beasts premieres on Netflix on July 21.