Who would you take with you to a desert island? A popular party question that livens up boring conversations and sometimes gives you a headache. However, Sat.1 has converted the mind game into a broadcast format. With the slight difference that the candidates are not allowed to choose their own love lagoon partner. But they have to get along with the person Sat.1 has chosen for them.
According to the broadcaster, over 1,000 singles actually wanted to participate in this experiment. They met briefly on speed-dating, after which “matching experts” — a job profile rarely on the radar of job centers — identified six supposedly perfect couples. They were invited to Malaysia. And after saying yes, he was immediately pushed overboard.
The newlyweds are supposed to spend 14 days on the island – as a couple and yet not quite alone, because of course there is a camera crew checking their well-being every minute. It feels as if your in-laws are traveling with you on your honeymoon and always conspicuously imperceptibly checking to see if there might be a crisis here, there, or there.
Growing old together forever
What Sat.1 singles are looking for is strikingly similar. For example, Saskia, 29, and Jörn, 32: He is looking for a “home base”, she wants someone “who will stay forever”. Jens, 36, and Charleen, 35: He wants to get married as soon as possible like his parents, she's looking for someone who will love her in all her ways – the good and the bad. 33-year-old Nadin and 30-year-old Niklas: She wants to finally meet someone, she wants to find a man with whom she can communicate “outside, in the real world” and they can grow old together “until we have eternal lives”. But can a TV show be very happy guide?
At least Niklas immediately convinces Nadine: “The spark was there from the beginning,” he says: “I have good hopes that I can fall in love with her, and Niklas admits: “It feels really good!” But will this tender feeling last – and grow – for 14 days in the desert, where there is little food and bushes? Marriages have failed because there are fewer things.
Longing for the first tropical storm
TV love: Ever since “Herzblatt,” every broadcaster has tried to get ratings through pandering. Wedding now, rapprochement later: we know “wedding at first sight”. With formats like “Bachelor in Paradise” or “Temptation Island”, the channels have also proven that they are ready for the island for a long time. In this respect, “Sleeped… on Honeymoon” is not really the first in the world. But at best, a new mix of familiar ingredients. Anyone who knows “Adam seeks Eve” is grateful that at least the candidates here are not naked.
On the contrary: the first island hours of the new dating show are so youth-free that even FSK viewers would turn away with a yawn. We watch a couple brush their teeth and kiss goodnight. When applying the cream and collecting the shells. When making a fire without a lighter, cutting vegetables, tanning. So much harmony in paradise is sweet. And extremely boring.
Adam and Eve were also once forced into marriage by a higher equal authority and abandoned in the Garden of Eden. If they had only held hands and fed each other pieces of mango, Genesis probably would never have been written: Every young love needs a serpent to show them the way to the tree of knowledge. For the following episodes, Sat.1 has teased first closenesses, first relationship stress and a tropical storm. Let it be entertainment!