‘Love Trip’ crosses international date line
Innocents abroad? Or ugly Americans? The folks at Freeform spent time in their creative kitchen, distilling the essence of Bravo cringe-fests, ABC’s “Bachelor” franchise and whiffs of culturally obtuse aromas wafting over from Netflix’s strenuously clueless “Emily in Paris” to come up with their own dating show souffle.
“Love Trip: Paris” (9 p.m., TV-14) sends four seriously single American females to the city of romance and puts them up in a posh hotel filled with other willing worthies, ready to date, mingle and canoodle in hot tubs. Along the way, there is some cross-cultural confusion as our ladies discover that vacant and aggressive selfabsorption is a turn-off in any language.
› Valentine’s Day programming isn’t just for Hallmark. The subscription streaming service Paramount+ launches a “Peak Romance” hub, a curated collection of movies and series associated with romantic escapism.
Look for helpings of classic films including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), “The Great Gatsby” (1974), “Funny Face” (1957) and “Some Like it Hot” (1959) as well as “Grease” (1978). There are many rom-coms to choose from, organized by decade for those who think hearts and flowers from the 1980s are different from, or better than, 21st-century love.
Paramount+ has recently merged with Showtime, expanding the content on the combined platform. It has also partnered with Walmart so that customers of that retailer’s Walmart+ shopping service get Paramount+ for free. It’s a way for Walmart to compete with Amazon Prime, a retail delivery service with a streaming service thrown in for good measure.
And you thought this was only about television.
Not to be outdone in the romance department, Pluto, the free ad-supported streaming service and programming aggregator, chose Valentine’s Day to launch its “I Love Lucy” channel. Now viewers can feast on the antics of Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel, as they have been doing for the past 70 years.
This is part of a larger Valentine’s Day promotion from Pluto, cleverly pitched as “Fall in Love with Free TV!” It offers a wealth of Hallmark movies as well as memorable romcoms, including “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Last Holiday,” “Runaway Bride,” “40 Days and 40 Nights,” “Two if By Sea,” “It Had to Be You,” “Chasing Amy” and many more.
› For steamier fare, Hulu launches the docuseries “Planet Sex With Cara Delevingne.” In each episode, the actress, model and influencer travels the world in search of sensual experience and insight. She was recently seen in the second season of “Only Murders in the Building,” also streaming on Hulu. She stars in Amazon Prime’s “Carnival Row,” returning for a second season Friday.
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OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› An informant is found dead on “FBI” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
› An engaged woman develops second thoughts after she meets her fiance’s charming brother in the 2021 romance “It Was Always You” (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).
› Adam Sandler takes a serious turn in the 2019 thriller “Uncut Gems” (8 p.m., Showtime), a film that received near universal acclaim from critics who singled out Sandler’s performance.
› A murder evokes Cold War memories on “FBI: International” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
› A bad preacher may be linked to teens’ abduction on “FBI: Most Wanted” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).