‘There’s bombshell after bombshell’: will Blue Therapy be the wildest reality TV ride of the year?

After three million people tuned in for the online version of this therapy show for Black couples, Channel 4 have turned it into an explosive series. Brace for controversy

In a world where we are on our seventh series of Naked Attraction's genital unveilings, it's hard to imagine there are many boundaries left for British reality television to break. But In Love & Toxic: Blue Therapy pushes at a more subtle taboo - Black people going to therapy. That may seem relatively innocuous, but it's full of couples baring their souls on screen, admitting to infidelity and insecurities and uttering ludicrous statements such as: But I'm a bad bitch!" It's quite the way to challenge a stereotype the show's creators wanted to battle against: that therapy is exclusively for middle-class white people."

Channel 4's latest series is one of the most fresh, fun and subversive reality TV debuts of the year. It is not entirely new, however. It has been adapted from the hit 2021 YouTube show Blue Therapy, an outrageous but surprisingly complex portrait of Black people's relationships that was named the most explosive reality show of the year".