You have two choices in this life. You can take the cynical path and deny that love is all that matters, or you can throw open your arms and embrace it. You can take the red pill, which might leave you crying at weddings and investing real emotions in Jennifer Aniston’s on/off romances. Or you can take the blue pill, which will see you die alone surrounded by empty tins of Sheba, never having known the joys of First Dates.
Britain has always had a totally-functional-and-not-at-all-weird-and-repressed relationship with television matchmaking shows. Like a nervous divorcee trying to summon a sense of fun, British dating shows have tended toward winking innuendo, talking through a screen, and school talent contest-style streetdance routines. But then First Dates came along, with its quiet confidence, its simple format of putting some single people together with booze and elegant food then filming it, and all our lives changed for ever.
First Dates’ strength is its sincerity – and, yes, I do say this knowing full well that the show might well have been designed in a lab to manipulate human emotions. It shows with minimal bells, whistles or pyrotechnics the tiny, sweet stages of love’s bloom: hair-smoothing; effervescent small talk; and then intense, sustained eye contact after guards are slung aside. Love, the makers of the show seem to be saying, is the goal. So who better to throw into these sweet waters than celebrities, the OG relationship experts? As we know, celebs are on the clock as soon as they’re put in front of a camera, and they never stray from their script. While this might stifle candidness and the gentle revelation of vulnerability, it doesn’t make Celebrity First Dates (Friday, 9pm, Channel 4) any less bomb.
The stars in this series are matched with civilians who don’t seem to know who their dates are. Diana, a tall, beautiful and quick-witted personal trainer, is hoping to meet someone who’s funny, with decent patter, self-assured and good-looking. This is the kind of person Diana dearly deserves. Instead, she gets Streatham’s own Alan Partridge, Richard Blackwood, who turns up, orders a piña colada and then asserts that Diana’s name is Daniella. Elsewhere, results are just as mixed. Neither Esther Rantzen nor Jessica Wright, star of Towie and author of erotic fiction hit Sparkling Stilettos, fully let down their chatshow guard. This is understandable, but lends a disconcerting edge to Wright’s date when Tom, a barge and canal enthusiast, discharges his best lingering eye-sex looks over dessert. Picture a whooper swan performing a courtship ritual to an inanimate lawn flamingo and you’re close.
Under normal First Dates circumstances, Diana gently telling Richard she doesn’t fancy him would cause shudders of empathetic horror that stay with you for days. Given that it’s celebrities we’re talking about, our response might be less sympathetic. But as Esther describes her husband’s last wishes on their final trip to the south of France before his death, we’re reminded that love endures. “He told me: ‘We must come back here every year, even if only one of us can come,’” Esther remembers. “And then he was dead by the Tuesday.” Clearly, we all have to grab love wherever we can get it, even if it’s filmed by Channel 4 and overlooked by Pepé Le Pew in Austin Reed’s sharpest suit.
