Channel 4 is deep into its summer of love. It’s having a Mating Season and — unusually for the network — it’s not all about sex. Instead, it’s about those fluttery butterflies that occur before the birds and the bees come in, when two people meet for the first time and get to know each other. Not mating then, but dating, which is scarier. When you watch Dates, it seems scarier still. The drama series is about ‘the social minefield’ of modern dating, and what a minefield it is. Ex-escorts, closet gay bankers, Cantonese lesbians — there’s the lot.
The first episode, about two very different people on a blind date, was quite intriguing. But I got sidetracked. The female character, Mia, looked disconcertingly like Samantha Cameron. Furthermore, her date’s name was David! Does Channel 4 know something we don’t about how the Camerons met? But then, the on-screen David was a lorry driver with an authentic-sounding northern accent, so the similarities ended there.
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