New dating show My Mum, Your Dad (ITV1) arrives on screen billed as the “middle-aged Love Island”. Cause for alarm. Will we get a bunch of 50-somethings with ice-white teeth and those up-the-bum bikinis? Or will they spend their time in the villa applying Fixodent and wondering if that niggling knee pain is the onset of arthritis? Thankfully, it’s neither.
The contestants here, who range from 43 to 57, are all attractive and well-turned out – extremely glamorous, in a couple of cases – but they don’t immediately strike you as desperate wannabes. These single parents – divorcees, never-marrieds and one widower – have been nominated for the show by their grown-up children, who would like to see them find love again.
Host Davina McCall brings exactly the right level of warmth and enthusiasm. They’re not in a Day-Glo Majorcan villa but in a nice house in the country. The twist is that the children are secretly monitoring all this from a location down the road, some of them from behind the sofa cushions because watching your dad try out chat-up lines is awkward.
