With everyone unable to leave the house to meet up with their latest dating app match, the only option is to live vicariously through others or brave a first date over FaceTime.
Here are some of the best dating shows to keep you company while social distancing.
The social dating experiment, Love Is Blind, was a Netflix sensation and has already been renewed for two more series following its success.
First Dates originally aired in 2013 and the popular format has been repeated in over 20 territories, with a spin off show, First Dates Hotel, created in 2017 taking the search for love to France and Italy.
Hundreds of couples have been matched up in the search for their soulmate, with the help of Maître d’ Fred Sirieix and his team.
The show has led to a host of engagements, marriages and even a baby.
The series production company, Twenty Twenty, has moved First Dates to Manchester as part of their commitment to UK regions.
In the aim to fight cancer, the RTS award-winning Stand Up To Cancer resumes tradition with a live-special with stars all across entertainment, sport and music rallying together to raise money for life saving research.
Maya Jama (The Circle), Alan Carr (Chatty Man) and Adam Hills (The Last Leg) will be presenting this year’s live extravaganza, which will be filled to the brim with an array of humorous sketches and tear-jerking awareness shorts.
It was love at first sight when Adam and Dan met on First Dates just over a year ago. Now engaged, we played Game, Set and Match with them at our First Dates: Uncovered event.
It’s much more interesting to watch people fall in love than fight,” said producer Molly Sayers at an RTS Futures event in late November, which turned the spotlight on Channel 4’s popular First Dates.
The Twenty Twenty Television production is that rare thing among dating shows: it wants audiences to like, not laugh at, its lovelorn participants.
Christmas City is a five-part series presented by Rav Wilding and Hayley Hassall that looks at what it takes to deliver a special Christmas.
The Twenty Twenty Television production is that rare thing among dating shows – it wants audiences to like, not laugh at its lovelorn participants.
“The programme comes out of the docs department of Channel 4 so it’s not an entertainment programme, although it is entertaining,” said Sayers, who produces the series. “As much as it’s about love, dating and the funny, flirty, sexy things happening in the restaurant, it’s a documentary about people.”
“First Dates has this amazing way of tackling big topics and themes,” she added.
To get ahead in casting, you fundamentally have to love people. You have to love talking to people, but most importantly you have to love listening to them. After five years in such a challenging and exhilarating industry, I feel that casting is something I have taken to strongly – and I think the real secret to success is being able to find that piece of yourself, however small it is, that connects you to someone else.
