‘Blind ‘Dates’ focuses on human frailty
“Dates” is a marked departure for The CW network. There are no arrow-slinging comicbook heroes, no sexy young vampires and nary a single cute teenager trying to recolonize the planet in the dystopian future. Instead, the new British import, premiering Thursday, is almost all talk, with only occasional action.
Each episode focuses on two people meeting for the first time through the magic of online dating. They are all strangers, of course, and as each learns about the other, so do we. In fact, we learn even more. We see the jilted schoolteacher purloin a woman’s lipstick in the ladies’ restroom. We know the beautiful young woman who is so judgmental toward the lorry driver on the other side of the table is really scared to death of being lonely.
We are inevitably caught up in the possibilities of each meeting because, after all, it’s a first date for us as well. The stories aren’t perfect, however. Many feel manipulated a bit too much for credibility sake. Or, more to the point, for the sake of ending the episode with a bit of O. Henry-style irony.
The performances in the five (of nine) episodes made available to critics are quite good. Oona Chaplin continues to both disappear in every character she portrays and stand out at the same time. From the loving but tragic young queen in “Game of Thrones,” to the “perfect” wife of a womanizing drunk in “The Hour,” she now becomes an increasingly desperate, and increasingly drunk, young woman who cannot maintain the ruse that she doesn’t need anyone.
Sheridan Smith is equally entrancing as Jenny, the young teacher whose fiance dumped her after five years. She seems to have everything going for her, and her successive blind dates with unsuitable men have only made her stronger. But she’s flawed. When men don’t turn out to be the answers to her prayers, she steals things, almost as if she needs to take something away from each experience, and if it can’t be a man, it may as well be a lipstick or another woman’s ring.
Gemma Chan is magnetic and vulnerable as the closeted Erica, while Katie McGrath turns in a fascinating performance as Erica’s seemingly stronger willed date. Will Mellor is great as David, the lorry driver who also is a widower with four children. He’s a man of simple truths and so obviously everything that his date, Mia (Chaplin), is not.
A few of the stories are related, but that’s more coincidence than anything more. The real link between the stories is in the human frailty of the daters. Although they may seem to be looking for different things in a potential relationship, they all in fact want the same thing. We all may share the wish not to be alone, but the desire manifests itself in each of us differently, and that forms the dramatic base for “Dates.”