KEY POINTS:
Makeover telly has no final frontier. Despite all hopes to the contrary, it was only a matter of time before renovation mania hit the bedroom. After all, we've had the house, garden, wardrobe, diet and our bodies, so why not jazz up people's sex lives?
How to Have Sex After Marriage blows away that tired old protest of too much information, taking reality telly to new heights of voyeurism. This is a show which makes the right to privacy just that much harder to defend.
Bob and Chloe were a genuinely distressed couple, desperate for help. But the main question, why this reserved Canadian couple felt compelled to have their marital problems aired for all to see, remained a mystery.
Most people would think after 15 years of being together, with no children to put a damper on things, it might be natural that Bob and Chloe's marriage was at the nice cup of cocoa stage.
But relationship psychotherapist Angela Mutanda and her sidekicks, a dating expert and a sex writer, were determined to get them going at it again like rabbits.
It wouldn't be makeover telly without the ritual humiliation but this show, which demands the couple rate each other's appearance and sexual performance, takes the practice to excruciating new levels.
As compensation, the couple were whisked off to learn such romance re-kindlers as sensual massage for him and for her, lap-dancing taught by an ageing vixen swathed in tight black plastic. There were surprises.
The lap-dancer described her gyrations as sending subliminal sexual messages. I thought the message would be better described as being flashed in neon lights.
After a week of confidence lessons and love letter-writing, the couple were whisked off to renew their wedding vows in Las Vegas in the same chapel, we were told without irony, that had once married Britney Spears. A role model of successful human relationships, if ever there was one.
With the blushing couple brought in to tell us they were now non-stop shagging, the week-long makeover was declared a great success.
One technique this show doesn't teach, is that less can be more. No mention of that in the oversexed costume drama of the moment, The Tudors, either. But after the above, old Henry VIII's pragmatic approach to keeping his sex life edgy is refreshingly straightforward.
Anne Boleyn doesn't go in for shiny black plastic but her panting and pouting is about as subliminal as lap-dancing, as are the sweet nothings she whispers in her man's ear: "Come soon, my darling, to my hot bed!"
In the odd moments when she's not hot for the king, Anne goes all corporate. Her talk to the team about the change in management style after her takeover as queen was particularly good.
Fidelity is not this drama's strong suit in any sense of the word. But why go for historical accuracy when you can titillate with the ever-present threat that any minute all the skanky hoes of the court are going to get down and bitch-slap?
Sometimes the drama meanders off to machinations in the Vatican or the dilemmas of the virtuous Sir Thomas More. But this is just padding between Henry's hot moves in the bedroom.
No need to teach this bloke the art of erotic massage. He's too busy playing chess on the naked buttocks of his latest squeeze or admiring another's fantastic dimples.
Makes you suspect there was a relationship psychotherapist, dating expert and sex author on the script-writing team, to illuminate us on the many creative ways in which Henry VIII was a hard hound-dog to keep on the porch.
