Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn
“The latter, of course, is precisely what happens in Would Like to Meet (BBC2) and Perfect Match (C4), two programmes this week aimed at curing singletons of their isolated status through the miracle of outside interference.
Both shows are abysmally watchable, of course, because they relentlessly tickle the throbbing voyeur tonsil that dangles somewhere in the centre of your brain. Or maybe that’s just my brain I’m referring to – I’ve been told I’m the nosiest person in Britain (I don’t like the... term ‘nosey’ – I prefer ‘aggressively observant’).
The two shows have opposed points of view. Perfect Match operates on the assumption that, hey, people should just be themselves, then it sets about finding them an ideal partner in a bid to create a couple so compatible they’ll quickly osmose into a single two-headed creature. Would Like To Meet, on the other hand, simply encourages its subjects to lie in a desperate bid to make themselves seem more attractive. OK, I’m exaggerating: it doesn’t actually encourage them to lie but it does fling them at the mercy of three irritatingly confident ‘gurus’ – a ‘body-language guru’ (top tip: don’t spend the entire date sitting on your thumb and squealing), a ‘conversation guru’ (top tip: never try to slip the word ‘infanticide’ into casual conversation), and a ‘style guru’, who, somewhat bizarrely, dresses more like a pharmaceutical rep than a fashion editor (top tip: don’t turn up with glue in your hair and a crude biro swastika on your forehead).MoreLess
Both shows are abysmally watchable, of course, because they relentlessly tickle the throbbing voyeur tonsil that dangles somewhere in the centre of your brain. Or maybe that’s just my brain I’m referring to – I’ve been told I’m the nosiest person in Britain (I don’t like the... term ‘nosey’ – I prefer ‘aggressively observant’).
The two shows have opposed points of view. Perfect Match operates on the assumption that, hey, people should just be themselves, then it sets about finding them an ideal partner in a bid to create a couple so compatible they’ll quickly osmose into a single two-headed creature. Would Like To Meet, on the other hand, simply encourages its subjects to lie in a desperate bid to make themselves seem more attractive. OK, I’m exaggerating: it doesn’t actually encourage them to lie but it does fling them at the mercy of three irritatingly confident ‘gurus’ – a ‘body-language guru’ (top tip: don’t spend the entire date sitting on your thumb and squealing), a ‘conversation guru’ (top tip: never try to slip the word ‘infanticide’ into casual conversation), and a ‘style guru’, who, somewhat bizarrely, dresses more like a pharmaceutical rep than a fashion editor (top tip: don’t turn up with glue in your hair and a crude biro swastika on your forehead).MoreLess
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