TV: Dinner Date Australia Review

Dinner Date Australia features one single girl going on three blind dates with three men – with one twist – they’ll all be cooking for her and she’s picked them out on the basis of their menus.

Let’s get one thing out of the way.

If you’re tuning into Dinner Date Australia because you want to see Manu Feildel, forget it. Feildel spends about one minute onscreen during this and I don’t reckon he would remember any of the names of the people involved. He doesn’t get involved in the segments or offer any cooking advice, he is just the guy top-and-tail-ing the segments. This is a role where his French accent is a bigger asset than any sort of cooking expertise he may or may not have.*

*Hey, and he just won Dancing with the Stars! Isn't that lucky considering he has this new show coming up?

Now that’s out the way, what is Dinner Date Australia? The answer is pretty simple - it’s ‘Perfect Match’ meets ‘My Kitchen Rules’. The production values are MKR 101. The premise is pretty hard to screw up - just capture all the awkward tension and charm of a first date and include lots of delicious looking food. It’s not easy to go wrong - and sure enough Dinner Date Australia is a solid, vaguely amusing, slightly depressing hour of utterly disposable television.

TV REVIEW - MY KITCHEN RULES

My Kitchen Rules made its debut early last year in a post-Masterchef haze as Channel Seven’s great white cooking show hope. It kicked off to good ratings and has since become one of my guilty pleasure shows – and Channel Seven are counting on improved ratings in its second season. Subtle as a sledgehammer, the editors desperately eke every ounce of drama out of an undercooked mushroom or a lumpy mousse. It’s great fun, but only if you don’t take it too seriously.

MY FIVE MOST ANTICIPATED AUSTRALIAN-MADE TV SHOWS OF 2011

I’ll out myself straight away – I completely prefer American and British TV to Australian television. It’s not that Australian television is worse, necessarily, just that since we have a smaller population and a less splintered audience we tend not to take as many risks. When you don’t have sustainable ratings on offer for a show like Mad Men, for example, no one is going to risk making it.

Our strengths lie, as always, in comedy and reality television, where we tend to capture so much more of the Australian character. Perhaps this is because we are a nation that enjoys laughing at ourselves and doesn’t take things too seriously - perhaps a serious drama requires a bigger risk, I don’t know. All I know is that Australian television hasn’t quite made the leap British and American TV has made just yet.

So it is with high hopes and heavy optimism that I look towards the coming year and pray that we can make something – anything - of note. Here are my five most anticipated Australian-made TV shows of 2011.