TV: Dinner Date Australia Review

Dinner Date Australia features one single girl going on three blind dates with three men – with one twist – they’ll all be cooking for her and she’s picked them out on the basis of their menus.

Let’s get one thing out of the way.

If you’re tuning into Dinner Date Australia because you want to see Manu Feildel, forget it. Feildel spends about one minute onscreen during this and I don’t reckon he would remember any of the names of the people involved. He doesn’t get involved in the segments or offer any cooking advice, he is just the guy top-and-tail-ing the segments. This is a role where his French accent is a bigger asset than any sort of cooking expertise he may or may not have.*

*Hey, and he just won Dancing with the Stars! Isn't that lucky considering he has this new show coming up?

Now that’s out the way, what is Dinner Date Australia? The answer is pretty simple - it’s ‘Perfect Match’ meets ‘My Kitchen Rules’. The production values are MKR 101. The premise is pretty hard to screw up - just capture all the awkward tension and charm of a first date and include lots of delicious looking food. It’s not easy to go wrong - and sure enough Dinner Date Australia is a solid, vaguely amusing, slightly depressing hour of utterly disposable television.

The main problem facing all the 'suitors' is that the dinner is being cooked while the date is happening, so that’s a high degree of difficulty for anyone to overcome. They fare better when they include their date in the cooking proceedings - as does the show - because then it becomes a cooking and dating show, not just a dating show with meals shot in close-up. The casting appears to be pretty good - in the first episode, the dater (Simone) is a very winning, watchable personality* – and that helps immeasurably.**

*She's also completely stunning.

**It’s also really fun to guess why everyone’s single. In the case of our second Romeo, it’s probably the ‘Italian stallion’ shirt. We get it, you’re Italian.

It’s all very pleasant and watchable but the whole experience is a bit soured by the annoying narrator, who takes that ‘Who Dares Wins’ approach to talking directly to contestants. “Oh, Jeff, what are you doing mate?!!!”. That’s annoying. I wanted the My Kitchen Rules narrator to come back and do his trick of creating drama where there was none, rather than admonishing contestants who can't hear him.

Other cheesy moments – the slick second prospect being smooth and the producers making the genius decision to play “Smooth Operator” over it. Really thought out of the box there, everyone. Also once the actual dates are over the show descends into cheesy dates shot with soft lighting that all gets a bit 'dating service ad from 1998'.

Overall, it’s mildly diverting television that doesn’t bring anything new to the dating show table. Would I be compelled to watch another episode? Not remotely. It’s about the gentlest television you could possibly find.

Which probably means it will rate its socks off.

Dinner Date Australia airs on Channel Seven 9:30pm Tuesday.


PS: Not to spoil anything, but the ending of the first episode is kind of depressingly predictable.

TV REVIEW - WINNERS AND LOSERS

Winners and Losers is a show for women.

That’s not to say it’s a bad show, or an unworthy show – but it’s just not a guy’s show.

This is Sex and the City (there’s even two blondes, a brunette and a redhead) meets Packed to the Rafters – and it’s Channel Seven’s attempt to double down on the Rafters audience, whisking that incredibly popular program off the air to make way for this – and in the process they’ll be hoping that they get two massive dramedy franchises off the ground.

Of course, they might risk alienating the Rafters audience, a casually diehard fan base that has forged a deep connection over the last four years to this particular family.

My question is simply this - by aiming the show squarely at half the country are they not giving it a chance to get out of the blocks?

The show itself tells the story of four friends – Bec (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith), Frances (Virginia Gay), Sophie (Melanie Vallejo) and Jenny (Melissa Bergland). They are, to unfairly reduce each character to a single adjective, the nice girl, the career woman, the party girl and the homely girl. One by one, they are invited to their 10-year high school reunion by Tiffany Turner (Michala Banas), the girl who tormented them in high school.

But that’s not really what the show is about. Like Rafters, which began life as a show about what happens when adult children move back into their family home and eventually became a show that told stories about family, this is a show that will eventually tell stories about friendship. The most crucial part of any of this is whether the characters themselves are worth hanging out with.

On that score, Winners and Losers had a 50% strike rate with me. Virginia Gay is always a welcome presence on my TV screen, never overplaying her clichéd ‘career woman’ role and always charming even without decent material. Zoe Tuckwell-Smith is equally luminous – playing a nice girl with enough depth behind her eyes to keep her interesting, rather than vacuous.

Melissa Bergland as Jenny and Melanie Vallejo as Sophie fare less well for varying reasons. Both characters are clichéd ‘types’, just like their friends, but neither the actresses nor the writers give me any hope that they’ll add depth and become more likeable as the series progresses. Having said that, this is a character drama – so time must be allowed for the characters to flourish – but having watched the second episode and liking those two characters even less, I’m rapidly losing confidence.

The supporting characters are tracksuit-pants comfortable – familiar enough to never threaten to overtake the driving force of the show in our main four characters. We have the doting but commitment-shy fiancé, the adoring gay best friend, the adoring straight best friend, the comforting, quirky family – and they are all serviceable.  The weakest link is Damien Bodie, who gets one note and one note only to play as the gay best friend. I know there must be some low-key gay men out there somewhere, but you wouldn’t know it from watching TV…

I’ve seen two episodes so far and the pilot was far superior to the episode that follows it. Unfortunately, the pilot ends on a plot development that I have never seen end well for any show I’ve ever watched. I won’t spoil it for you, but I think it is extremely difficult to have a show about characters that go through this particular situation. On top of that, this particular plot development is clumsily inserted and painfully telegraphed.

In the end, though, I will not be the harbinger of doom and glory for this particular show. That will be the female audience, who will either take to this with Sex and the City-like abandon, or shun it like they did the Cashmere Mafia.

In the end, the deciding factor will be how much we want to hang out with these four friends. I don’t, but you might.

All in all, a nil-all draw.

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So weigh in, if you like! Did you like the characters? Do you think this show plays as strongly to gender roles as I do? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

TV REVIEW - MY KITCHEN RULES

My Kitchen Rules made its debut early last year in a post-Masterchef haze as Channel Seven’s great white cooking show hope. It kicked off to good ratings and has since become one of my guilty pleasure shows – and Channel Seven are counting on improved ratings in its second season. Subtle as a sledgehammer, the editors desperately eke every ounce of drama out of an undercooked mushroom or a lumpy mousse. It’s great fun, but only if you don’t take it too seriously.

What makes My Kitchen Rules so much fun to watch is the dinner party conceit that opens up the series – it’s so entertaining to see the teams either unsubtly try to undermine each other or blissfully abandon all pretence of competition whatsoever and just enjoy being on TV.

The key to any reality TV show is the casting and this time around the agents have done a good job. This year the show features two sets of six teams after deigning to include pairs from Tasmania – and the first set have plenty of entertaining elements. In a series like this there is always a ‘villain’ team and we’re spoilt with two – the upstart bitchy housemates (SA last year, Vic this year) and the show’s most entertaining couple in sometime, the henpecker and henpeckee from Tasmania.

The other teams in the first set are also entertaining; the two butchers trying to set the world record for use of the word ‘mate’, the charming young sisters with Polish heritage, the ebullient used car salesman and his quiet wife and the delightful Italian cousins from Western Australia. (Don’t let the annoying, gimmicky, oh-my-goodness ads during the tennis put you off, they’re actually really lovely.) They’re mostly versions of teams we saw last year, but no less fun to watch.

The judges (Manu Fieldel and Pete Evans) are more confident this time around, carrying a swagger they didn’t have in the first season. They still indulge in annoying reality-show fakeouts like ‘I didn’t like it…(interminable pause)…I loved it” but they’re charming and good looking enough to keep the show watchable.

I’ll be putting up brief thoughts on each individual show as they come along – because as I said, this show is more in my wheelhouse than Masterchef is. Masterchef is all about inspiration and the life story behind the food we make. My Kitchen Rules doesn’t worry too much about that – cutting straight to the competition and being all the better for it. They’re both perfectly worthy reality shows but My Kitchen Rules has captured that same element that made it so ridiculously watchable last year – and that’s a good thing in my book.