The Sex Robots Are Coming
Channel 4, Thursday 30 November, 10pm
Spoiler alert: there’s a brilliant twist revealed 17 minutes into this week’s extraordinary Channel 4 doc about sex robots and the “robosexuals” who are attracted to them. The film starts off by cross-cutting between a lab in the US where a bunch of brainy people are hard at work developing the world’s first commercially viable sex-bot, and a cosy domestic setting in the Deep South where gently spoken, grey-haired old-timer James hangs out with his collection of four “high-end” sex dolls. Without wanting to be too judgemental about this chap, he is filmed at one point hanging out in a forest with one of his lady dolls and professing that one can indeed love an inanimate object. It could be a scene from a horror film. Annabelle 3: The Sex Doll Years, perhaps. Then comes the doozy of the shock twist, as the programme calmly reveals that, far from being the stereotype of a lonely old man who takes solace in rubber dolls, James is in fact… married! Yes, we meet the lady who has somehow come to terms with the fact that her husband enjoys nothing more than engaging in relations with a plastic object. Meanwhile back in the lab, sexbot creator Matt Mcmullen explains that “pubic hair’s making a comeback”. At least as far as sex dolls are concerned, but not necessarily when it comes to real human beings, one guesses. In the end, it seems clear that in the near future, millions of blokes will indeed be able to have it off with the fake female of their choice. But interestingly, the idea that women might want their own sex dude dolls was barely addressed at all…