Now that “dating” has again become a topic of brow-furrowing media concern, with Tinder being wheeled out as the villain, it’s a relief to come across something on the subject with such laidback warmth. It’s overlong, needing a stricter edit, but engaging and sympathetic. Film-maker Menelik Shabazz looks at dating and relationships in the UK’s black British community, talking to single people, therapists, relationship counsellors and also to comics, including Andi Osho, who can be relied upon to supply a suitably ribald account of what’s at stake.
The film moves garrulously across various issues, trivial and serious, including how long a steady relationship is supposed to last before the woman is entitled to expect a marriage proposal, to the ethical distinctions between cheating and having sex with someone who is cheating, and even to the toxic social residue of slavery and how much that can be blamed for inherited patterns of irresponsibility and enabling. There is a little bit of Hallmark-card-type philosophising, but likability and charm as well.
