How the human race managed to meet, fall in love and reproduce before the advent of dating TV series is anyone’s guess.
Across the channels (and various platforms) there are hundreds of variations on this theme, from farmers wanting wives, to girls chasing a bachelor, mums wanting a daughter-in-law, rock stars wanting groupies, and many more.
About the only thing more prolific is the multitude of websites and online services for the lost and lovelorn.
It was inevitable, then, that someone would combine the two, as has been done here with Ready for Love.
Yet strangely, given the huge success of its two ancestors, this new attempt at matchmaking hit a large speed bump on its hopeful road to love. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
The idea here is simple – three unmarried men selected by the series producer Eva (Desperate Housewives) Longoria (pictured) are set up with 12 women who applied for the chance to find love through a Facebook page.
The men are what anyone would usually call ”a catch”, billed in fact as the most eligible bachelors in the US. There was wealthy finance whiz Ben Patton, indie rock star Tim Lopez and (wealthy) entrepreneur Ernesto Arguello.
The biggest problem was that the debut episode was – and here’s that speed bump – two hours long. A veritable movie for viewers to digest, and a long one at that.
Predictably, it failed to gel with an audience more used to getting their matchmaking in 22-minute bites and just two weeks after its April 9 debut it still hadn’t recovered and was dumped by NBC.
But this is where things get interesting. The series, with its wealthy handsome guys and would-be brides, was still out there rolling along as everyone looked for love.
So instead of disappearing entirely, it was shifted to the online broadcast platform Hulu and Apple’s iTunes.
The season finale unravelled on Tuesday and while to say if anyone actually found what they were looking for would be a huge spoiler, it actually proved more interesting than a lot of its genre stablemates, and these guys worked extra hard to weed out the gold-diggers to find a partner. This may be a series that proved a bit much for many to commit to, but it is perfect for anyone addicted to The Bachelor-style shows.
Ready for Love is available to Hulu subscribers overseas and through iTunes.
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– Sydney Morning Herald
