Some human hearts are simpler than others. And a good thing too: living in a world full of Brontës would be exhausting.
On the other hand, the premise of BBC Three’s new series is so awful that you do yearn to flee across the moors, screaming your agony to the heavens before immuring yourself for life in the nearest forbidding stone farmhouse.
You take one couple at “a commitment crossroads” (loosely translated “who, like everyone else in the history of ever are wondering if, in an ideal world, they could do better, but who are too young to know that the answer lies anywhere but a reality show”). You introduce each of them to their “perfect on-paper partner” and send them off on separate date nights to see what happens. It reminds me of the Pendle witch trials – if you duck the suspect and she drowns, she was innocent; if she survives, she’s guilty and gets burned at the stake.
Stevie meets a knockout in a red dress. Her name is Shannon. “My friends would describe me as the life of the party, maybe.” “Homewrecker!” I hear the shades of a hundred bosom-hitching nanas whisper as Stevie’s eyes come out on stalks.
It’s all lovely, but it makes no sense. Possibly because the human heart contains multitudes, all madder than the last, but the overwhelming sensation you are left with is the artificiality of it all. So much has evidently been lost in the edit – particularly in the final section – that the shaping (or in this case very poorly shaping) hand becomes ridiculously apparent. Which is at least all of a contemptuous piece with a series conceived in such bad faith.