Gwyneth Paltrow’s (excruciatingly intimate) Goop TV: Bonkers therapies. Orgasm masterclasses. Magic mushrooms – and exorcisms? It’s all now beaming into your living room

• The Goop Lab, is a six-part series fronted by the 47-year-old earth mother herself
• Goop is the oft-ridiculed, occasionally controversial, popular lifestyle brand
• It started as website in 2008 and grew into a £200 million e-commerce business

The Goop Lab is a six-part series fronted by actress-turned-lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow (pictrued) 

Reach new depths, extols the tagline for the latest screen venture from actress-turned-lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow.

No, it’s not the kooky Oscar-winning blonde’s latest blockbuster (she’s ‘semi-retired’, after all) but a small-screen foray with her multi-million-pound lifestyle empire, Goop.

Note it in your diary: The Goop Lab, a six-part series fronted by the 47-year-old earth mother herself, with the brand’s chief content officer Elise Loehnen, arrives on Netflix this month.

Goop is the oft-ridiculed, occasionally controversial, hugely popular lifestyle brand which started as a website in 2008 and grew into a £200 million e-commerce business.

More than a million subscribers are hooked on the brand’s curious mix of advice, some conventional and some downright wacky. Moon dust in a £155 morning smoothie, anyone?

Some deride Goop as an overhyped platform peddling pseudoscience. It even paid £112,000 in penalties to settle a lawsuit around an egg, to be worn in an intimate body area, that it claimed could boost women’s energy levels.

For the show, Gwyneth and Elise appear to have interviewed researchers, doctors and ‘alternative health practitioners’, including psychic Laura Lynne Jackson — a glamorous blonde who believes we all have psychic abilities.

Save for a teaser trailer lasting all of one minute and 18 seconds, Netflix has released little information, presumably assuming the clips will be enough to whet appetites.

And it is probably right. Take, for instance, the main promotional shot. Doesn’t Gwynnie look pretty in pink? Quite.

But it’s safe to say the onion-like layers of pink surrounding the actress are not meant to represent the petals of a flower, but are symbolic of a woman’s most intimate area.

‘The Goop Lab guides the deeply inquisitive viewer in an exploration of boundary-pushing wellness topics, including psychedelics, cold therapy, female pleasure, anti-ageing, energy healing and psychics,’ says Netflix.

Beth Hale looks at what may be in store . . .

Don’t let Gran see this!

There are several hints in the trailer that this may be one programme to watch out of sight of your grandparents.

‘So what happens in a workshop?’ asks Gwyneth, ethereal in a floral frock next to business pal Elise.

‘Everyone gets off,’ chuckles a trendy- looking older lady who is sitting opposite them. Cut to the next scene, where a woman is twitching and groaning while laying on a therapy bed (left). Golly.

There are several hints in the trailer that this may be one programme to watch out of sight of your grandparents

In her recent Goop Christmas advert, Gwyneth was seen almost slipping a sex toy into a Christmas stocking, before reconsidering and then keeping it for herself.

In another scene from the show trailer, the trendy older woman is seen sitting on the floor next to a half-naked woman with a mirror and a light in a setting not far removed from a gynaecologist’s consulting room.

‘You’ve never seen yourself?’ she asks.

Yep, definitely not one you’ll want to watch with Granny.

Pins and needles or Botox?

Gwyneth is a fan of cosmetic acupuncture, and has posted a selfie online while having it done. In the show’s trailer, co-presenter Elise (right) tries it, too.

This version of the traditional ancient Chinese medicine is popular as an alternative to surgery or Botox. 

It involves having up to 100 needles inserted into the face and ears and claims to improve skin moisture balance, elasticity and cellular turnover, and to reduce inflammation from eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis.

Gwyneth is a fan of cosmetic acupuncture, and has posted a selfie online while having it done

In The Goop Lab, a woman lies back while a gloved man wields a syringe along her cheek. The voiceover has a woman saying ‘unregulated’. Is it Botox, or some kind of fillers?

Gwyneth has previously had Botox, but she soon realised it wasn’t a good call. ‘[I’ll] try anything, except I won’t do Botox again, because I looked crazy.’

Now, she puts her good skin down to a high-end skincare regimen and regular treatments.

Outing your demons

Goop has sold healing stickers that offer to ‘fill in the deficiencies in your reserves’, and the website has an entire section devoted to spirituality. 

But apparently The Goop Lab is venturing into new territory: exorcisms.

‘I had an exorcism,’ says Elise. ‘Oh wow,’ says Gwynnie. Cut back to the woman on the therapy bed, with a man supporting her spine. Exorcism, or another orgasm? It’s a mystery.

Goop has sold healing stickers that offer to ‘fill in the deficiencies in your reserves’, and the website has an entire section devoted to spirituality

A mushroom smoothie? What a trippy idea

The word ‘psychedelics’ pops up on screen followed by a crying woman lying on a blue mat, wearing headphones.

In a separate clip, she says: ‘I went through years of therapy in about five hours.’ What this has to do with psychedelics is unclear.

Later in the trailer, we see mushrooms on a set of scales. 

Though she hasn’t tried them herself, Gwyneth tips ‘psychedelics’ as the next big thing

Though she hasn’t tried them herself, Gwyneth tips ‘psychedelics’ as the next big thing, after a University of California study on rats found that small doses of hallucinogens could have therapeutic benefits, including a reduction in anxiety, depression, OCD and pain.

Gwyneth is a known fan of mushroom powder added to smoothies, but does that pile of mushrooms mean she’s been trying a different sort of fungi?

The iceman cometh

A man is spreadeagled on the surface of water that looks as if it’s covered by ice. 

Later, men and women in gowns and boots trudge through the snow behind a man who bears a striking resemblance to Dutch ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof (right), whose extreme cold therapy programme is said to be the toughest in the world.

Harnessing the cold for health is extremely fashionable. 

Fans of an icy plunge say it can help gain mastery over our nervous systems, boost immunity, raise metabolism, reduce inflammation, protect the heart and promote mental strength. Wow.

Fans of an icy plunge say it can help gain mastery over our nervous systems and boost immunity

Ice swimmers may also experience an endorphin rush, in which feel-good chemicals are released. The perceived wisdom, however, is that it’s not wise to jump straight into icy water. There’s a risk of hypothermia for one thing.

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