This week is the perfect time to launch a new dating show, given that Vanity Fair has just written about the grim impact of Tinder on America's dating culture. Sample quote: "Exploitative and disrespectful men have always existed. There are many evolved men, but there may be something going on in hookup culture now that is making some more resistant to evolving."
In Young, Free and Single: Live (E4, Monday), single people in an apartment are set up on weekly dates, and then hunky Steve Jones with his Welsh accent and amazing hair drops into the gaff and watches recordings of how they got on. I'm not sure where watching people's dates lies on the tedium-o-meter, but I'd put it after looking at pictures of other people's children on Facebook, or Snapchats from people talking to themselves on the bus.
Gym-inflated lads and women with make-up guns set to CGI are what we’ve come to expect from reality television. The show boasts an interactive feature, which bills itself as the audience somehow being able to influence the dates – Jump out the window! Go back in time and get friends with better judgment! – but this is less “choose your own adventure” and more “random tweets on the screen”.
The first date goes to Tom, with his puppy-dog eyes and riveting conversation: “Oh my God, can I ask you who is your favourite actor” and “Are we really getting into this subject? Because I won’t stop.”
Dating culture is not so much in flux right now as in a maelstrom. It would be great if there was a programme looking at the realities of dating in 2015, instead of the tedium of these cookie-cutter TV wannabes who seem to be looking for a pathway to a better reality television show more than for love and relationships.
There's far more sex in Christian Louboutin: The World's Most Luxurious Shoes (Channel 4, Tuesday). This documentary promises a unique insight into the designer whose red lacquered soles sell for thousands. We meet Louboutin in his native Paris, whizzing around on a moped, as the wry voiceover informs us that the shoes are all about "A mix of edgy, sexy, sinister, and transgressive".
"This is Rosemary's Baby," Christian explains to a skittish Hamish Bowles, Vogue's European editor-at-large, handling an ugly pair of blue and pink Mary Janes.
"It's difficult to see them in abstract," Bowles decides, with the brilliant realisation that the shoes they're looking at do not contain feet. The cobbler reaches for another pair. "Soft dominatrix, Taylor Swift goes fetish," he explains. Bowles agrees nervously.
There are three main issues we need to get out of the way for this documentary to progress, but they don’t arise until later. One is the male gaze Louboutin’s world embraces. “There is a lot of sexual energy in shoes, that’s for sure,” he says, “The heel has been considered as a phallic sign, which I think is completely wrong. When a woman is perched on a very high heel, what they feel, but also in front of men or other people can perceive, is actually the foot is in the position of when the person comes.” This declaration is creepy rather than insightful.
The second issue is pain. “Many, many times I’ve been hearing women saying ‘oh I can’t walk in these shoes’, and I thought one day I really want to design shoes which would not be made to walk and there will be no possibility to walk in.” That led to an unnerving shoot photographed by David Lynch.
The third issue is cost, perhaps the most forgivable. Louboutin says he will never compromise on quality or put his name to a cheaper line. “That is non-negotiable.”
Off we go to Bhutan then, where Louboutin’s marketing team miss a great pun opportunity to brand his latest endeavour as Christian LouBhutan. He has somehow managed to befriend the king and queen of the country, and has set craftsmen to work hand-painting designs on chucks of wood.
The results are stunning, although Louboutin isn’t sure what he’ll do with them yet. This excursion exposes the designer’s attention to detail, his hands-on involvement in the process, but most of all his whimsy. It’s the kookiness of Louboutin that is dominant, and the chipper soundtrack elevates this tone.
Yet despite the access the documentary was afforded (Kylie Minogue’s foot moulds, his Milan factory), we are left with little insight into how Louboutin came to dominate his niche. Personal revelations are left unexplored, such as how he found out a year ago that his father was in fact an Egyptian man his mother was having an affair with, and not the French carpenter who raised him.
You rarely have to encourage fashion designers to take themselves seriously, but this documentary could have done with a slightly more po-faced approach.
Ireland can't get enough of the Wild Atlantic Way, which is the best kind of marketing trick, one that sells you something you already had. The finale of Creedon's Wild Atlantic Way (RTÉ 1, Sunday) celebrates our new bloodlust for the west coast. The format is simple: John Creedon drives up the coast in a van, with some Nationwide-style pauses. First up, three artists have made it their mission to match up Paul Henry paintings with the real-life landscape. For the purpose of this programme, they don't seem very good at what sounds like a transition-year project. "Not a match," they say mournfully, holding a painting from a book up to a mountain. The by-numbers scenario succeeds the second time around.
Like Creedon, I spend most of this show thinking about other elements the Wild Atlantic Way could offer. He suggests commemorating the areas Henry painted, and he’s right. Camille Pissarro’s paintings at Montfoucault in Normandy are marked in this way, connecting the art and the painter to the place. There you go, Fáilte Ireland, you can have that one for free.
The next set up is cheesier still, with Creedon coming off a boat post-fishing, lamenting the fact that if this were a cookery show, there would be an award-winning chef ready to cook a delicious meal. A guy reaches out his hand, “Hello John, I’m an award-winning chef . . . ” Ah here. “Anything is possible on the Wild Atlantic Way,” Creedon mugs.
But when it gets to Donegal, the programme comes into its own, exploring the true beauty of the place without the need to sell it like an infomercial. Creedon details the spectacular scenery of the Slieve League sea cliffs, and takes in the summer solstice at Grianán Aileach on the Inishowen peninsula. This is a tourist documentary with a light touch, one that would work well as an inflight entertainment option on transatlantic Aer Lingus flights. Confusingly, almost all of the interviewees along the way are men, which overloads the programme with similar voices. Ireland, and its coast, is a lot more diverse than that.
Bernice Harrison is on leave
