The producers of Too Hot to Handle have access to some of the most sexually explicit audio recordings that exist in the entertainment industry.
“They are, um, incredible,” laughs Ros Coward, Executive Producer at Thames Television. “Sex is the first thing we ask them about in the auditions, because they need to be randy enough. Sometimes you can’t believe that the conversations you are having are part of your day job.”
The hit Netflix dating show has just come back for a second series after a successful first run last summer. The concept – a group of the most sexually unfulfilled singletons from across the world are tasked with finding love, but with money deducted from the $100,000 prize pot every time they touch – resonated with a quarantined world starved of human contact.
“It felt like the whole world was sexually frustrated at the same time as the first series launched,” adds Laura Gibson, Creative Director at Talkback. “When we were filming the second, the frustration among contestants was even bigger, because they’d been forced to quarantine for two weeks ahead of going to the villa.”
This time round, to keep the show's concept a secret, unsuspecting contestants were fooled into thinking they were going on a very different show – the made-up Parties in Paradise – so that the surprise sex ban would hit twice as hard.
“A couple of people were suspicious and thought that it was Too Hot to Handle, because they’d all been quarantined in their apartments, watching the first series of Too Hot to Handle in between auditions,” says Coward. “But when the cast all did their interviews we made all the crew wear Parties in Paradise T-Shirts, and so contestant Marvin, who thought he knew, went, ‘Oh, it really is Parties in Paradise! I must be wrong!’”
Upon entering the villa in Turks and Caicos (chosen for its record-low Coronavirus rates) contestants have 24 hours to get as close as they like under the Parties in Paradise illusion. After that, a tiny cone robot called Lana is wheeled out from behind a smoke machine, and reveals the show’s real concept: that from that moment on, funny business will cost up to $5,000 a move. With cameras everywhere, each indiscretion is recorded and fined – even self-pleasure.
In the first episode, when Lana was presented to the contestants they were so devastated they immediately abandoned the party – then in full swing – and decamped to bed.
“They are genuinely annoyed,” says Coward. “What you see in that scene is genuine devastation. They went to bed because it was much easier for them to go and tuck a duvet around themselves than try and continue the party without breaking the rules.”
One contestant, adds Gibson, was so stunned to find out what show he was on that he lay on the floor for six minutes straight to recover. “We obviously had to cut it down in the episode but it was six minutes in reality,” says Coward. “I’ve never seen anybody look so shocked in my life.” Is there any fear that some contestants may refuse to take part? “It's always something you have to be prepared for.”
The show’s return coincides with the new series of Love Island, opening the two up for comparison. While Love Island rewards bad behaviour, with contestants encouraged to be as naughty as possible on camera and manipulative editing amping up the drama, THTH prides itself on a more philosophical approach.
“We auditioned 500 people and they went through four or five rounds of auditions, and we get very deep. We talk at length about the mistakes they’ve made in the past, so that we are sure that they need this process, to learn to value an emotional connection over sex. Often we know what their journey on the show is going to be before they even go to the villa,” says Coward. Last series, several contestants worked through deep-rooted commitment issues that led to such a touching finale many viewers were left in tears.
It means the show is less cruel than its ITV counterpart, which has been accused of dubious ethics – largely as a result of its format, which sees contestants pick each other out of a line-up. Monday night’s Love Island episode saw two men have their confidence visibly crushed after four girls declined to step forward for either of them, relegating them to ‘the subs bench’. The show also has a history of seeing black female contestants sidelined.
Then there are the “games”: last series cruelly saw contestants have to guess which mean tweets from the public described them, while the show received a record number of complaints to Ofcom after contestant Dani Dyer was tricked into thinking her partner had been unfaithful to her.
With THTH, on the other hand, the format does not lend itself to horrible moments of humiliation. Couples are encouraged to form naturally through a series of dates and bonding (often erotic) activities, and contestants can even go the whole series without finding a partner. What’s more, with an international cast that caters to a much wider range of personality types and cultures, dating preferences seem more varied and open. One of this series’ charms has been watching Parisian contestant Marvin delighting Americans with his French.
“The international focus is great because it's like we’re recreating the best, sexiest type of summer holiday,” continues Coward. “And it really does mean we have the right balance of stories and types. If we don’t have enough in the audition, we will go out of our way to find them.”
In line with the focus on reality TV and mental health in the last few years – following the death by suicide of former Love Island host Caroline Flack and two former Love Island contestants – Coward reveals that the show also has a welfare team to look after the cast “the minute we make contact with them” , a psychologist on-site at all times, and check-ins with the cast the week before the episodes air and the moment the series wraps. Post-series support also includes media training, social media advice and management. “This is a relationship that lasts forever”, says Gibson. “Literally for as long as they need.”
While the contestants have clearly forgiven the producers for hoodwinking them into two weeks of chastity (Gibson reveals two couples are still together now), there is one thing they won’t be forgetting in a hurry.
“We filmed just before Christmas so while they were inside the villa lockdown was getting worse and worse. And when the filming wrapped and the contestants went back into the real world, they realised the UK had gone into stage four. They thought they were going to their families for Christmas and then suddenly they realised, er... there was no Christmas.”
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