Just what the summer needed

‘Love on the Spectrum’: An unscripted Netflix series from Australia

“Tiger King” already seems like a relic of the gaslight era — that is, the beginning the

COVID-19 times, when we all started feeling like Ingrid Bergman in “Gaslight.”

Back in March, as America was waking up to its top-down role in making this pandemic as long and contagious as possible, the pulpy seven-part Netflix series served up a tall glass of Florida sunshine schadenfreude, mixing outlandish criminality with poor human/ feline cohabitation choices. It hit the spot, and suited these animalistic times.

Four months later, I’m through with predictions. It’s no use guessing who may or may not be interested in a seriously heartwarming Australian dating series about a fantastically diverse group of young adults living with autism spectrum disorder.

But it deserves a big U.S. audience. “Love on the Spectrum,” first broadcast in Australia in

2019, is pretty irresistible. I’m in agreement with whoever wrote the headline for the Melbournebased online publication The New Daily: It’s the “gorgeous show making ‘The Bachelor’ look boring.”

It’s easy to fall for it, even if you find some of its unscripted storytelling techniques less than trustworthy. The subjects’ search for love and romantic companionship, as they navigate dating experiences that, for some, are their very first, don’t need much editorial flourish. The people on screen are so naturally charismatic and compelling, they aren’t helped by an insistent, impish musical score, or zippy editing rhythms heavy on the cutaway reaction shots, for dramatic or comic emphasis.

Some of the touches, in other words, belong to reality shows far less interesting than this one. The subjects directly address the camera operator in many scenes.

Series director Cian O’Clery is the main (and unseen) operator, offering words of comfort or encouragement when things get daunting for those on camera.

We meet Michael, 25, whose mission is “to become a husband.” Chloe, 19, speaks in episode one of the difficulty of reading emotions, while 22-year-old Ruth, who is deaf as well as autistic, greets the camera by introducing her boyfriend of four years, Thomas, her fellow “aspie.”

Some of the series regulars are in long-term relationships; others, such as dazzlingly quickwitted Maddi or studious Kelvin (both introduced in episode two), have yet to find someone. When Maddi rehearses an upcoming dinner date with her parents (dad plays the bartender, mom is the date), we experience it from Maddi’s perspective. She’s graced with a genuinely loving family, though the scenario role-playing, designed to alleviate the stress of a new social interaction, has a way of engendering its share of stress in the bargain.

How fully you fall headlong into “Love on the Spectrum” will depend on where you sit on the disdain spectrum regarding reality TV. However broad its parameters, the genre’s brazen demands require that the audience suspends both its disbelief

its belief, simultaneously. The success of a second- or third-tier reality show (let’s assume at least a thousand tiers) lies in rolling with the lie in order to get to the just desserts.

The fakery levels came as a mild shock to me back in 2008 (I was an idiot). When “Top Chef ” filmed a Chicago block party episode on my block, our crestfallen neighbors told me precisely how the show’s staff stocked their “ordinary” refrigerator with everything the chefs needed to “find,” “spontaneously,” on camera a little later. Should’ve seen it coming, but still: shameless.

Happily, “Love on the Spectrum” doesn’t push its contrivances that far, even if Ruth, at one point, does mention a particular date scenario as seeming “very a

and

A scene from “Love on the Spectrum,” a dating series on young adults with autism spectrum disorder.

la ‘The Bachelor.’ ” Series director and co-producer O’Clery worked on the Australian version of the unscripted series “Employable Me,” featuring a neurodiverse line-up of people seeking work. On that show, O’Clery told mamamia, he realized the seldom-discussed romantic dreams of those on the autism spectrum speak to everybody’s experiences.

“Love on the Spectrum” found a large and appreciative audience in Australia. It’s catnip for Netflix: The streaming giant struck gold with its unscripted Kenand-Barbie dating melees “Love is Blind” and “Too Hot to Handle.” “Indian Matchmaking” debuted last week. Season two of “Dating Around,” Netflix’s inaugural foray into this broad genre, premiered earlier this summer.

In an interview with The New Daily, Ruth of “Love on the Spectrum” spoke out against realityTV mainstays such as “The Bachelor” and “Love Island,” noting that the shows’ images of the love-worthy excluded entire

swaths of the population. “Neuro-typical and able-bodied ideals are often portrayed as perfection,” she said. “And of course they’re not.”

With “The Good Doctor” on ABC, and Netflix’s own “Atypical” entering its fourth and final season, scripted series devoted to protagonists on the autism spectrum have made inroads, though not without pushback and controversy regarding how those characters are treated. “Love on the Spectrum” has its share of genre cliches it could do without. Among them: the mid-date debriefing interview footage. More troublingly: the moment when Sharnae, with her long-term love Jimmy on a seaside holiday, tells him: “I don’t care about the cameras. It’s just me and you.” You believe that she said it, and meant it, and you even believe she wasn’t performing for the cameras as she was thinking and saying it. But any nonfiction filmmaker changes the nature of the filmed experiment simply by being there, and in this case

confiding in the subjects, however gently.

The degree to which reality TV rests on its golden-egg paradox — carefully manipulated spontaneity — doesn’t matter much to most viewers. The makers of “Love on the Spectrum” have said they prefer the label “documentary” to “reality TV.” It’s not, quite. The wrong kind of slickness has a way of working against the authenticity grain. But I was happy to revisit these stories across five episodes, of roughly 40-45 minutes apiece. Unlike “Tiger King” or “The Bachelor,” or certain real-life political reality shows that lost touch with the real world a long time ago, “Love on the Spectrum” is about empathy. And about something more interesting than contempt.

“Love on the Spectrum” premieres on Netflix July 22.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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