As St Valentine’s Day looms, Virgin Media Television (VMTV) screens a one-off dating show with a difference. Generation Dating shows how in a world of swiping, ghosting and catfishing, dating can be a tricky business. The new show takes two perfect strangers, one older and one younger, lets them get to know one another and then sets them a challenge.
Find the perfect date – for each other.
The show is designed to find out if you can really put an old head on young shoulders or ignite a young flame in an old heart. You may be spoiled for choice but, in an increasingly online dating world, how do you know who to trust? Is there an app for that? It doesn’t get any easier when you’re older and wiser either.
Sure, you may have seen it all and you’re less likely to be fooled, but when people your age are married or just not interested in finding a mate, where do you go to find true love? Viewers meet 71-year-old MJ who has returned to Ireland from the US. Feisty, full of beans and with an incredible life story, she’d like nothing more than to meet someone to share it with.
MJ meets up with 23-year-old DCU student Declan, who has no trouble ‘playing the field’ – but none of his relationships go the distance. He’d love to meet the right girl but has had no luck. Eyebrows are raised with his revelation that people his age think nothing of dating and sleeping with more than one person at a time.
As the pair meet and get to know each other, what starts as an awkward double act soon blossoms into an unlikely friendship. MJ travels to meet Declan’s family, discovering his ‘mummy’s boy’ roots. Declan turns up at MJ’s home and, to her bemusement, creates a Tinder profile for her. With that, the search gets underway.
As MJ scours college campuses and local football clubs looking for a girl for Declan, he stumbles haplessly among the dog walkers of Sandymount Strand and joins a senior’s dance class on the hunt for older men. But how will these date quests work out? Have they learned enough about each other to conjure up two perfect dinner partners?
Have they done the impossible and bridged the generation gap?
Only time will tell.
Generation Dating is on Virgin Media One at 10pm on Tuesday, February 11.
