If you like First Dates, you’ll love This is Dating

The tagline of This is Dating, a new podcast from across the pond, is ‘Come for the cringe, stay for the connection.’ This sums up the listening experience pretty well. If the prospect of eavesdropping on a series of strangers’ first dates sends a shiver down your spine (some of us have endured enough disastrous dates of our own), give it ten minutes and cupid’s arrow should slowly begin to sink in.

The concept is similar to that of First Dates, the reality TV show in which lonely hearts pair up for dinner and judgment while a sexy French maitre d’ looks on, pitying the lack of social skills on display before him. The difference is that This is Dating doesn’t play for laughs. It is unusually sympathetic towards the singletons who agree to have their Zoom dates broadcast down the airwaves. The team of women behind the podcast, one of whom is a ‘behavioural scientist’, even sit in and place prompts and topics of discussion in the Zoom chat box so the conversation never runs dry. It’s all very 2020s.

Virginia and Nick don’t hit it off straightaway. ‘What is the first thing you notice about a person when you meet them?’ she asks. ‘Their smile,’ he replies. ‘Me too. And their hair.’ ‘I don’t have a lot of that, so…’ They are looking at each other down the screen. Nick, sipping on his Grand Marnier, says he isn’t into bondage. Virginia describes a visit to a sex dungeon. How they get to a second date is anyone’s guess.

In another episode, a woman describes the time she agreed to go for dinner with a stranger only to find herself taking him to a drive-through and paying for the hundred tacos he insisted on ordering because he had ‘forgotten’ his wallet.