Imagine you're smack if the middle of making love and you hear, "Uh, a little to the left there, buddy..." And it's not coming from your girlfriend.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. British television is going where no makeover show before has gone before: into the bedroom. Forget Dr. Phil and Dr. Ruth. They stop at the bedroom door. Here come the "Sex Inspectors." And they're practically crawling under the covers with you.

"Sex Inspectors" is a new sex-life makeover show that uses night-vision and thermal imagery cameras to actually record couples (gasp) having sex. The controversial show will be shorting out television tubes all over the UK next month, helping long-term couples put the spice back into their sex lives. The show's stars are its two sexperts, hilarious American author Michael Alvear, (Men are Pigs but We Love Bacon /Kensington Press) and Tracey Cox, a British sex therapist, who meet with the couples, assess the bedroom action and then offer advice on how to heat things up.

The viewers actually get to see the night-vision footage, which not only caused a huge controversy before the show even aired, but is bound to spark a bit of end-of-the-bed quarterbacking by the watercooler as well. For now, the show only profiles committed heterosexual couples in long-term relationships.

Will we be seeing Bed-TV in the US? My guess is yes. After all, Americans love British imports. Trading Spaces, American Idol and even Who Wants To Be a Millionaire were all successful UK shows before we snagged them for ourselves. And even more than importing UK hits, Hollywood producers love putting sex on TV. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right?

With reality shows competing to constantly one-up each other with outrageous twists such as eating vomit, careening off the side of a bridge in a locked car, creating real-life clones via plastic surgery and convincing beauty queens to fall in love with geeks, some might have thought we'd reached our limit as far as what people will do or watch on television. Not true. When the ratings for Sex Inspectors hit the roof as they are expected to do, some enterprising producer will no doubt bring the show to the U.S.

Then, some brave American couples will get a chance to add a little va-va-voom to their bland, blah-blah sex lives. And every Tuesday night we'll all be shouting at our televisions, "To the left! To the left!"

© 2004 by Lisa Daily. All rights reserved.