‘Acapulco Shore’: The best in binge-worthy foreign trash TV

Trash TV remains a reliable way to check out for an hour or three. The appeal stays the same: beautiful strangers yell at each other, hook up, and chase fleeting fame while viewers enjoy the mess. Acapulco Shore still sits at the center of that conversation even though the series wrapped its run years ago.

Love Island

Like Ernest Hemingway once said (and Se7en also borrowed from him), "The world is a beautiful place and one worth fighting for," but if he’d have seen Love Island, ol' Big Papa might have changed his tune. Love Island’s essentially a Dantesque level of hell where the most abhorrent people you could possibly imagine pretend that they’ve fallen in love with each other to gain some sort of fleeting fame after the show. Apparently it’s a gameshow too. Though what the prize is no one is sure. Maybe it’s Love. Or maybe it’s as previously mentioned, chlamydia. Season 8 premiered on Peacock in June 2026 while earlier US seasons remain available on Netflix.

Acapulco Shore

Acapulco Shore ran eleven seasons between 2014 and 2023 and now streams primarily on Paramount+. The format never changed: sun-drenched villas, nonstop hookups, and the same cast rotating through familiar fights. Viewers still return for the familiar rhythm even when the episodes feel like reruns of reruns.

Embarrassing Bodies

On paper, a show that invites people to come on TV and show off some bizarre health condition that they’ve got might sound very flawed. Because for one, who would go on such a show? And secondly, who would watch such a show? It turns out, plenty of both. The show has been on in the UK for some time now so you’ve got plenty of weird skin conditions, rare diseases, and unsightly appendages to look at. Series 9 episodes, including recent 2022 and later installments, continue to air on Channel 4.

The Love Wagon

Whether you call it Ride Together, Car Pool, or Love Ride, it’s all pretty much the same thing. A group of young people travel the world (or Asia at least) in a pink van with the pretty thinly added storyline that they must return to Japan still in the same couple that they left in. You can always pretend that it’s not the hook ups and fall outs that you like and it’s just the breathtaking views (which in fairness are pretty nice). Asian Journey and African Journey seasons remain on Netflix for anyone looking to revisit the format.

Good Morning Call

“Nao rents her dream apartment, but things are not what they seem when she finds out she will be sharing it with high school heart throb Uehara.” It’s a situation we’ve all been in and that’s why it’s so relatable. Except it’s not but it’s the kind of TV that lets you leave your brain with the man at the door so you can forget about work for a while and dream about what it would be like to be a teenage heartthrob (again). Availability stays region-specific, yet the premise still delivers the same low-stakes comfort watch.

Terrace House

What’s more fun than watching people you don’t know walk around Hawaii or Tokyo getting into slightly unrealistic adventures with each other and generally acting silly because they’re not talented enough to be actors? Nothing is. Well, except Terrace House because that’s exactly what the show is. The final season ended after the Hana Kimura incident in 2020, closing the original run but leaving space for a successor series to pick up the same low-key group dynamic.

Busted!

In this South Korean TV show, a group of entertainers are taken to a house to become detectives and solve various crimes including murders. (Not real ones though, obviously.) The whole show doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t, so why not put off watching that new hard-hitting cop drama for the night and instead get stuck right into some thoroughly stupid and highly entertaining nonsense? Three seasons aired, with the last dropping in January 2021.

El Internado

This Spanish show focuses on the students of a fictional boarding school in a forest far from the city where macabre events occur, and it’s actually pretty watchable. It is very cheaply made by the looks of things (like, filming it on an iPhone might have been a better idea in a lot of ways) and it’s aimed at teenagers, but that doesn’t make it any less aimed at you, who was also once a teenager. The 2021 Prime Video reboot El Internado: Las Cumbres brought the setting back for a new generation while keeping the original’s gothic boarding-school tension.

100% Hotter

While most makeover shows are just that, 100% Hotter is a makeunder show. So now that we’ve piqued your interest with this amazing twist in the format, why not take a seat and watch some people who wanted to be on TV to show off how original they are made to look just as normal as the rest of us? But they will be 100% hotter, and that’s surely the main thing. The series aired from 2016 through 2018 across thirty-two episodes before wrapping for good.

The Boyfriend

The Boyfriend premiered on Netflix in 2024 as a rebranded successor to Terrace House. It keeps the same slow-burn format of singles living together, navigating flirtations, and dealing with the occasional group blow-up, now set in an Airbnb-style house with narration from a Terrace House veteran. Viewers who miss the original’s low-stakes voyeurism can drop straight into the new version without learning an entirely new cast dynamic.

Too Hot to Handle

Too Hot to Handle keeps the trash-TV formula tight: attractive singles arrive at a tropical villa, get told they cannot hook up, then immediately test every rule while a cash prize shrinks with each violation. Multiple seasons sit on Netflix with fresh casts cycling through the same temptations and betrayals. The show’s ongoing run makes it an easy next stop for anyone who already binged the earlier dating roundups.

Love Is Blind

Love Is Blind built its reputation on the pods, the dramatic proposals, and the post-engagement chaos that follows once contestants meet in real life. Multiple seasons plus international editions remain on Netflix, each delivering fresh viral arguments and reunion meltdowns. The format’s mix of manufactured intimacy and public fallout still rewards binge sessions that stretch well past midnight.

Selling Sunset

Selling Sunset trades beach hookups for luxury real-estate rivalries, yet the interpersonal drama stays just as addictive. Agents navigate million-dollar listings, office power plays, and occasional romantic entanglements inside pristine Los Angeles homes. Ongoing seasons with strong viewership numbers keep the series on rotation for viewers who like their trash TV dressed in high-end staging and designer outfits.

These shows prove the guilty-pleasure genre keeps evolving even when individual series end or shift platforms. Whether the draw is dating experiments, group living, or high-glamour real estate, the core appeal stays consistent: watch strangers make questionable choices and feel slightly better about your own decisions. Acapulco Shore may have closed its doors, but the appetite for similar spectacles shows no sign of slowing.