What a viewWhy Japan’s Terrace House: Opening New Doors is the acceptable, well-mannered face of reality TV

And … relax. After the festive fusillade of eyeball-grabbers on your streaming service of choice, here’s your chance to sink into the sofa and do nothing much – just like the participants in Japanese reality television show Terrace House: Opening New Doors.

Hang on before you switch off: although watching six strangers move in together, then gossip, shop, cook, eat, sleep and occasionally do something sporty might sound as interesting as repeats of the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th national congress, this is like the Big Brother franchise with manners – a polite take on global trash TV.

Opening New Doors is the fourth season of Terrace House, and if you haven’t seen the other three, where have you been? The first 40 of 45 episodes are now available for bingeing on Netflix.

The concept is not complicated; put three males and three females of the species together in a house and hope for the sake of viewing figures that some fall in love, preferably with each other. Not, you understand, hope that they do anything as coarse as have sex, but instead develop old-fashioned romantic attachments.

Opening New Doors begins with a student and wannabe model, a trainee chef, a freelance writer, an amateur ice hockey player, professional snowboarder and a fledgling model, aged 19 to 31, all of whom live together in a large, fetchingly designed house in the woods outside mountain resort town Karuizawa. Snow sports, hot springs, waterfalls, attractive people in cosy communal gatherings; what could possibly go wrong?

Cue yelps of laughter – not from new friends but from the other players in this effortlessly likeable production. Six random commentators (also evenly divided between the sexes) back in the studio constitute a sort of truncated Greek chorus voicing opinions on potential resident interaction and linking the on-location scenes.