Deep Fake Love Review 2023 Tv Show Series Season Cast Crew Online

Netflix’s Deep Fake Love brings a new kind of extreme to the streamer’s reality dating lineup — and that’s saying something. You can find Netflix reality romance shows where the sexed-up singles practice abstinence for cash and where people make lifetime commitments to a person they’ve never seen before. There’s even one where couples are arbitrarily split up and then forced to “marry” a virtual stranger. Deep Fake Love takes the “virtual” part and runs with it by being the first reality show to not only incorporate deepfakes, but to build a whole show around falsified footage of people making out. Is this the reality show of the future or should we put this technology in the past?

Opening Shot: We’ve got the two staples of pretty much every deeply horny reality romance show: a gorgeous beach followed by a sterile, sci-fi-ish white room that’s ominously named the White Room.

The Gist: The show takes five committed couples, in relationships lasting from 8 months to 9 years, and splits all of them into two groups. Since the English language is really failing me as I think of how to describe the format, I will say that every couple has a Partner A and a Partner B. Refreshingly, Deep Fake Love doesn’t divide the couples up along gender lines and we even have a same-sex couple in the mix. Anyway — all of the Partner As move into the Venus villa, and all of the Partner Bs move into the Mars villa. Upon entering their respective villas, the partners all learn that each villa comes stocked with 10 super sexy singles who seem to be incredibly down with the idea of adultery, at least when it’s the concept behind a reality TV gig.

After both villas go through all of the usual pool-centric or pool-adjacent dating show shenanigans and sexy icebreakers, one involving actual ice, the show takes all of the Partner As to the White Room and shows each one of them footage of their Partner Bs having a very good time over in the other villa. And by “good time” I mean sensual touching, butt grabbing, ice cube antics, and full-on make outs.

What they don’t know yet, and what host Raquel Sánchez Silva soon tells them, is that some — or maybe all — of this footage has been tampered with deepfake technology. Everything ranging from a facial expression to an entire face can be swapped out, making it look like a hot single was making out with someone who is planning on moving to Australia with their partner as soon as this is over! After all of the Partner As have had their hearts broken and minds blown, they’re shuffled out and the process repeats with the Partner Bs.

The actual gameplay is this: each partner will be asked to guess whether the footage they’ve just seen is real or fake. Ultimately the winning couple will be the couple who, combined, correctly labeled the most scenes as real or fake. Does that mean that a couple could win after having spent a season correctly identifying numerous real scenes of them actually making out with strangers? I think so! Talk about your pyrrhic victories!

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The entire vibe of the show is like if The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On was entirely set during the Casa Amor section of every Love Island season.

Sex and Skin: The first four minutes of the premiere is an overture of horniness the likes of which we’ve not really seen on Netflix before. Just people licking chocolate off of butts, straddling strangers, making out in pools — there’s an entire montage of people having sex, like heavy thrusting and moaning under the covers, that goes far beyond the grainy night vision antics of Too Hot to Handle. Of course I don’t actually know how much of this footage is real and how much of those tongues and abs and butts are deepfakes!

Parting Shot: Before learning about the whole deepfakes angle of the show, we’ve got one enraged partner declaring that he is now single.

Our Take: So, this is madness. Depending on how many reality dating shows you watch, it may be very welcome madness. There are only so many shows one can handle where sexy people do sexy things on a beach for money before it all gets to be repetitive. With this deepfake twist, Deep Fake Love immediately sets itself apart from Too Hot to Handle, Love Island, Are You the One?, etc. It’s a gag unlike any we’ve seen before, mainly because the technology was previously reserved for Luke Skywalker and pornography. But now that it’s being used to test the commitment of couples on a reality show, we’re getting to see freak outs the likes of which we’ve never seen before on these kinds of shows. It’s gratuitous and voyeuristic, but that’s what the genre’s ultimately all about, right?

The technology is helped by the fact that everyone involved, even those who are so close to getting married, is game to strip down to a swimsuit and flirt with just whoever immediately. It’s bonkers to see people go from sobbing over leaving their partner for a week or two to immediately sidling up to a hottie and claiming them as their own. Except on Deep Fake Love, this flirtation is framed as “good for their relationship” because so-and-so will help them “test the strength of their connection with their partner.” Sure!

There is, of course, a dark side to this: now that deepfake technology has been unleashed in reality TV, the genre may never be the same. Savvy viewers are used to watching events on these shows unfold with a wary eye because we know how producers produce and editors edit — but that’s when they just have footage that actually exists at their disposal. Deep Fake Love is pioneering the practice of creating completely new moments to yield scandalous results. It works because that’s the premise of this show, but will this lead to the tweaking or outright manipulation of footage on other shows? It’s one thing to replace an actor’s face because a scene requires the presence of Mark Hamill circa 1988, but it feels like another to make reality stars do or say things they did not do or say on a show that purports to reflect reality… isn’t it?

Fortunately we don’t have to worry about that yet, and your mileage may vary when it comes to how that impacts your enjoyment of Deep Fake Love. For me, I think I’m just going to stop worrying and learn how to love the deepfake… for now. But, like, please, Drag Race producers — don’t get any ideas.