“Men are trash – in particular Ryan,” announces Nikita from Cardiff, minutes before sitting down to dinner with him to pick over the rubble of their relationship. Nikita and Ryan are former work colleagues who dated for two years, during which he cheated on her and insisted they kept their relationship a secret. So now Nikita wants answers, or closure, or possibly to rekindle their romance. Quite honestly, Nikita is not sure what she wants from Ryan other than a free dinner. If making that happen means going on telly to have her heart smashed to pieces all over again, then so be it.
The natural successor to Channel 4’s First Dates, Eating With My Ex (Tuesdays, BBC Three) invites assorted twentysomethings to blow sad snot bubbles over plates of spaghetti while reassessing past relationships. Under the gaze of bored-looking waiting staff, the show delivers awkward yet mesmerising dissections of love gone sour. Each of the couples’ plates arrive with doleful questions inscribed on the rim, among them “Were we good together?”, “Did you cheat on me?” and “Will we see each other again?”, a flourish designed to inject drama but also, one suspects, because not all the participants can be trusted to tie their own shoelaces, let alone keep the conversation flowing over a two-course meal.
So far, we have watched Courtney from London explaining to Savanna, his girlfriend of six months, how he was driven to cheat on her due to her “full-on” personality. For him, “full-on” means “woman with opinions” along with the occasional bout of public hand-holding. Jeez, talk about pushing a guy into a corner. We’ve met Chloe who, sitting across from her puppyish ex, Niall, had the haunted expression of a woman being held against her will. Niall and Chloe had dated for three years, at the end of which Chloe promptly banged his best pal. As Niall angled for an explanation, Chloe appeared to be scouting the joint for an escape route.
And there was Luke and Lewis from Doncaster, whose relationship had come to a mysterious end after Lewis went to Zante to get mashed with his mates. Remember young Kevin’s face in The Wonder Years when his sweetheart Winnie told him she’d met someone else? Luke had the same look after Lewis – who incidentally has the words “Strength Respect Loyalty” tattooed on his chest - revealed that he’d moved in with his holiday fling, although this time nobody thought to soundtrack the moment with the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows.
Beneath Eating With My Ex’s vortex of hurt feelings, recriminations and strained silences is a big-hearted series containing little of the contrivance that has been First Dates’ gradual undoing; it’s hard to fake it with someone who’s met your parents and seen you in your birthday suit. Far from the usual cynical reality fare, it invites us to root for the lonely, the disillusioned and the emotionally wounded. Which is why I would like to propose a spin-off called Eating My Ex, in which broken-hearted lovers gather together to feast on the innards of their lying, cheating, gaslighting ex-partners. If kindness and honesty are too much to ask for, then providing another free dinner is the least they can do.
