Tourism Board Hopes Normal People Makes You Appropriately Horny for Ireland

From the moment the trailer for the TV adaption of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People came out, it’s been assumed the show would be very, very horny. “Surely there are more pressing matters outside of the fucking in this trailer,” said Jezebel’s managing editor Megan Reynolds, “but I’m very sorry, all I see before me are two attractive people with skin like fresh cream licking each other’s bodies and panting in the semi-dark.” An apt assessment in my eyes.

Now that Normal People has finally premiered, it has been confirmed that the show is definitely very, very horny and that it relies pretty heavily on all that fucking foreshadowed by the trailer. An aspect of the show that Tourism Ireland, a marketing board responsible for drumming up interest in visiting Ireland, is doing their best to mitigate.

“They had to be selective with the cinematography as not everything is suitable for worldwide distribution from a tourism perspective,” said Brendan Griffin, the Tourism Minister, regarding a very chaste video that was put together using clips from the show to capitalize off the success of Normal People and encourage people to visit the region after coronavirus restrictions ease up.

It’s typically been thought that sex sells, however it would appear that there is such a thing as too much sex for the Irish. Now, I’m not saying that including some of the more explicit sex scenes would make me want to visit the lush, green, rolling hills of the Irish countryside, but I’m also not saying it wouldn’t.

If Rooney’s novel taught us anything, it’s that the very basic micro-dramas of otherwise normal people’s (see what I did there) lives can become wholly engrossing epochs with the addition of erotic tension between occasionally anemic protagonists. Of course, the “come to Ireland because it’s beautiful here” angle makes sense, but, as the occasionally anemic protagonist of my own life, “come get a taste of this Irish cream and have a torrid love affair that will both tantalize and devastate you in equal measure” also sounds pretty good to me right now. To each their own, I guess.