I’m partial to a television dating show but is it all getting out of hand? The routine proliferation of different formats is turning into a veritable infestation of the schedules. Soon, we won’t be able to move for pushy, pouting desperadoes trying to find love or the best camera-hogging “storyline” – whichever comes first and makes the heart beat faster. Beyond that, could it be true that the dating TV tsunami has a real-world effect on how ordinary British people romantically relate to each other?
The Love Island franchise has a well documented dark side: not least the suicides of people connected to the show (presenter Caroline Flack and contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis). Still, generally, dating TV appears to be experiencing a gold rush featuring myriad shows. Love Is Blind (people bond unseen in pods). The Ultimatum (put bluntly: marry me or do one). Married at First Sight (the clue is in the title). Temptation Island (couples are “tested”), Naked Attraction (starkers and ready for love), Sexy Beasts (icky flirting in bizarre masks), The Love Trap (evictees sent crashing through trap doors). And many more. This excludes formats I’ve decided are too lowbrow/depraved even for me – shows, usually with “hot” in the titles, that make you want to weep for the human race while simultaneously spooning out your own eyeballs.
Into the over-brimming arena, ITV is to launch yet another show, My Mum, Your Dad, dubbed the “older Love Island”. Presented by Davina McCall, from a US format devised by Greg Daniels (co-creator of Parks and Recreation), it will have divorced/widowed participants seeking romance in a country house, while their grown children spy on them and direct what happens. This could turn out to be a charming long-overdue showcase for mature amour. Or a full-blown sub-Freudian nightmare. Either way, you would have to cut off my electricity to stop me from watching it.
Is there a deeper meaning to people like me devouring such shows in droves (beyond, let’s be frank, an addiction to gossip and drama)? A recent discussion panel on the genre at the Edinburgh TV festival concluded that in the outside world “it’s never been harder to find love”, and that the huge popularity of dating shows is a reflection of this. It’s a compelling argument: that a toxic blend of dating apps, catfishing, ghosting and atomic levels of commitment-phobia has turned modern dating life into an emotionally dystopian sinkhole of crushed hearts and lost hope. What’s less convincing is the idea that TV dating shows serve as a universal panacea.
For one thing, most of dating TV seems a cynical, careerist, Instagram-ready, mega-wannabe world away even from the late Cilla Black trilling over newly hatched couples on Blind Date. In such a heaving, overheated tele-scape, the likes of First Dates could start to seem quaint. (People dining and talking – are they perverts or something?)
Nor does there seem much credence to the claims that, beyond entertainment, there might be a deeper existential need for TV dating fare. In fairness, certain shows (I Kissed a Boy, Indian Matchmaking and Jewish Matchmaking, even the latest revitalised series of Love Island) do deliver highs (connections; insights into humanity; cultural revelations) along with the lows (such ruthless branding it can only be a matter of time before logos are tattooed on to fake-tanned foreheads; flirting so stilted you feel like holding mirrors over their mouths to check they’re still breathing).
Still, are TV producers seriously suggesting that people look at the bombed-out ruins of their own love lives, the swirling sewage plants of their own emotional trajectories – and then turn to dating TV for succour? That they think: “Another relationship has been torpedoed, but I will take courage from the swimwear-clad lovebirds on Love Island, some of whom might even stay together for something other than lucrative post-transmission co-branding opportunities”? Or “I will attend my next date garbed in a dragon-mask and see if things go better”?
In truth, dating TV’s undeniable appeal/influence looks likely to be much more complicated. From the programme-makers’ point of view, such shows are relatively cheap and lucrative to produce (compared with drama, say). As for viewers, the genre is, counterintuitively, much less about “reality” than it is about escapism, downtime and hoots. Dating TV may have normalised the intrinsically abnormal (demanding people cop off in front of millions). And, just like dating apps before it, it may have warped the mindsets and expectations of younger viewers in particular (“Where is my crackling fire-pit of lurrve?”). However, again like dating apps, it has also turbo-charged cynicism. These audiences are alert to synthetic romance-fakery and are prone to pushing back loudly, rigorously, and forever.
In short, dating TV viewers aren’t dummies – for all the abundance of shows, the spectacle, and the noise, they still know they’re watching TV, and people who, for whatever reason, want to appear on TV. The burning issue of dating TV remains unchanged from Blind Date onwards: are they (the contestants) in it for love (emotions) or fame (Insta-clicks)? Underestimate this genre-savvy audience at your peril.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
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