Maia Dunphy series superior to provocative Ch4 offering

It’s hard to believe that there is a need for any television station to hold a ‘real sex’ campaign when it appears there is so much of it around on our screens.

But Channel 4 says it is campaigning for real sex to separate it from pornography. And yet, the channel deliberately titles programmes very provocatively, and I am no prude.

There was Sex Box on Monday night fronted by the respectable presenter, Mariella Frostrup, who is usually seen presenting The Book Show.

The name probably attracted anyone into pornography but I fear it may have kept the very viewers they wanted away.

There was little to satisfy the pornography lovers despite the pre-publicity that couples would be having sex live on air – they were, but in a box right there on set as Mariella and three sex experts discussed our attitude to sex.

The idea was to encourage couples representing a population diversity – to include gays and the physically handicapped.

So the couple came out and then sat to discuss what they had done inside the box, but this part was stilted and awkward, showing that we are still quite prudish about the sex act itself. There was little detailed information given, despite the experts’ efforts to draw it out of them, and maybe just as well.

I mean there must be other ways of finding out what other people do in the privacy of their own bedroom. If I’m honest, I am still curious about people in wheelchairs but none the wiser after watching Sex Box – and again, probably just as well as there’s no need for me to know.

This one-hour programme appears to have been a one-off and by the end of it, I really didn’t see the point of it and didn’t think I was any nearer to knowing anything about real sex.

In fact, Maia Dunphy’s series, What Women Want, on RTÉ 2 on Thursdays is far more illuminating, which is not a boast RTÉ can make every day of the week, especially if pitted up against the raunchier Channel 4.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.