Tubridy to help you feel the lurve
LATE LATE SPECIAL
RTÉ ONE, TONIGHT, 9.35
IT’S not Blind Date .Or First
Dates .Or Sex On The Beach.
Or anything like that, at all, at all.
Oh no, tonight’s Late
Late Valentine’s special is different because...why, exactly?
Two hundred single men and women pack the audience looking for love (and if you see anyone who says ‘lurve’ in relation to Valentine’s Day, you have permission to use extreme sarcasm in the most brutal fashion) because what better way to meet someone new than the unforgiving gaze of the nation’s biggest TV show while Ryan Tubridy plays matchmaker?
Now, fine fellow though Tubridy may be, he isn’t the first person you’d call on to play Cupid.
But therein lies the essential problem with modern dating shows on traditional formats such as the Late Late – can we even trust any of the participants?
Let’s be honest, how many of these people will have previously applied to be on other dating and/or reality TV shows?
I’m going to make a wild, and probably wildly inaccurate, prediction for what we can expect to see – there will be at least one Irish lad who enjoyed the free hospitality a bit too much and makes an eejit of himself in front of everyone. My crystal ball also indicates that there will be at least one Irish lass who fancies a career in television.
There may or may not be someone who used to be in a boyband or girlband that nobody cared about then or can remember now.
And, of course, there will most likely be a charming older couple who are looking for love later in life.
The studio audience will love them, they will win whatever the big prize happens to be (I’m thinking something along the lines of Paris in the springtime) and the usual emotionally incontinent saps at home
will be crying into their Twitter with bogus sentiment and laughably fake tears.
Bitter about Valentine’s Day? Nope, not me. How dare you even suggest such thing...
If you missed The
Handmaid’s Tale when it first aired on Channel 4 last year, shame on you – you missed what was probably the drama of the year.
It’s being repeated on RTÉ 2 (tonight is itself a repeat of their earlier showing this week) and kicks off with a double bill of the first two episodes.
Forget some of the hype which was simply idiotic, this is serious television which maintains the power to shock.
That it ended up attracting a backlash from some quarters was more to do to the reception it received than the production itself, but anyone with an interest in the dystopian – and, these days, that’s all of us – should have their season link ready for this grim masterpiece.