If you’ve ever watched First Dates, and found your enjoyment hindered by the fact that it doesn’t take place in a luxury hotel in France, First Dates Hotel is the show for you. For those who haven’t already guessed, First Dates Hotel takes all the usual trappings of the First Dates experience – lovelorn singles, friendly bartender, chirpy voiceover – and checks them into a 13th-century castle in Provence, where guests are given 48 hours to find love before they’re forced to pack their bags.
The setting represents an issue for me. Holiday romances are not exactly known for their longevity. My last holiday fling involved me spending a week with a girl I’d met in Portugal, thinking I was falling in love, and then wondering why the phone number she had given me didn’t work when I got home. Anyone can imagine they’ve found love when they are eating in a French restaurant next to a swimming pool, with Fred the maître d’ and the restaurant staff turning every conversation into an innuendo. I would like to see how they get on when the date takes place at somewhere like The Apprentice losers’ cafe – that’s surely the true test of a match.
If First Dates Hotel giveth with one hand in the form of idyllic setting, it very much taketh away in the form of immediate feedback. When I was a teacher, one of the most agonising aspects was that you were told at the end of an interview whether you had got the job or not. There is nothing more horrendous, having given your best possible account of yourself to someone, than being almost immediately told that they don’t like you. Rejection is hard to take at the best of times, but at least in the real world you simply send a text asking if they would like to see you again, see the read receipt and receive no reply, before descending into a beautiful week of self-pity and listening to Beyoncé. But here, as soon as the date is finished, rather than going their separate ways and waiting for their follow-up text message to be ignored, the couple are ushered into some sort of interrogation chamber and asked if they want to see each other again. I am looking forward to the next series where the date is subject to some form of Ofsted inspection.
If the first date is successful, and they are both keen, then we are privy to the further developments of the relationship and any other dates that they go on for the rest of their time in the hotel. But where’s the fun in that? The show has missed a trick in not following the couples who decide against further interaction, as I would quite like to follow them trying to avoid each other for two days while being confined to the same hotel lobby. I imagine we’d see a dater using Fred as a human shield, while he delivers phrases like “Hiding is the language of love” and “Concealment shows passion”.
I am also slightly cynical about the couples that do decide to take things further. The idea that if you are struggling to find love you resolve to take that to TV follows the same kind of twisted logic that makes people decide to go on to Embarrassing Bodies. I imagine that the possibility of further airtime might make you inclined to ignore the fact that your date is a weirdo who said something borderline racist during dinner. It’s possible that I might be being cold-hearted, though, as people do genuinely seem to click. That said, I would strongly advise them to double-check any phone numbers they are given.
Monday, 10pm, Channel 4
