My Mum, Your Dad: Don’t call this ‘Love Handles Island’ – some of these people have read a book
This is My Mum, Your Dad (ITV1), the new reality dating show for forty and fiftysomethings, but it is also the Conservative government of Theresa May as the prime minister hosts an urgent Brexit pow-wow in the grounds of Chequers for her agitated cabinet.
What else am I watching this week? Ah yes Wilderness (Prime Video), the latest blazing drama about adultery. Not much chance of a crossover with Leave vs Remain there … except the cheater looks like he’s about to be shoved off a cliff and it’s impossible not to make a comparison with Westminster treachery and May’s apparatchik wailing: “I was chucked under a bus. My reputation was ruined.”
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Hide AdBloody Tories, they get everywhere. But let’s leave Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos (BBC2) for now and concentrate on Davina McCall’s latest outing as gushy, gossipy big sister to the nation. My Mum, Your Dad was dubbed “Love Handles Island” before it aired but that’s unfair. It is not a peacock parade. The quest is genuine - no one is here for the ulterior motive of a gig as a TV presenter. The participants are real and so are the tears. These people have probably read a book or two.
It starts with eight, all of them nervous, out of practice and needing tips from their twentysomething kids who, they think, merely escorted them to the country house but are in fact holed up in a bunker watching everything on a bank of screens.
Monique was dumped by text. Sharon admits: “I’ve been cheated on all my life.” Clayton, having eaten dinner on his own for eight years, would seriously dispute that “One is Fun”. Natalie describes herself as “very single”. And Roger is a widower, 37 years with the love of his life until she died of cancer.
The bumbling and stumbling is endearing, though not for Roger’s daughter Jess as she watches him get to know Caroline, a bubbly Glaswegian. “He’s on a date and he’s talking about my dog,” Jess groans, though all the kids are great - funny and perceptive as they absolutely root for their parents. Roger admits he cleans the mutt’s gnashers with his own toothbrush. Cringe! But then he tells the story of his wife and soon everyone is crying.
Gradually more lovelorn hopefuls are added, which doesn’t go down well with some viewers. They like the show because it’s sweet, civil, almost courtly and worry about a descent into Love Island-style bitchiness and conniving. But we’re not going to be given happy endings for free. There will have to be some unrequitedness, maybe a semi-tragic misunderstanding. The course of true love etc. Especially on ITV.
