News item dated:13/04/2010
Dinner Date - ITV1 serves up love in the afternoon...
Filming is underway on new ITV1 daytime series DINNER DATE, which puts love on the menu for single guys and girls.
Produced by Hat Trick Productions, each episode of the 30 x 60 factual entertainment series gives one lucky person the chance to find true love over three meals... each cooked by a blind date in their own home.
At the start of each programme a singleton is given five three-course menus to choose from, each tenderly put together by a potential date eager to make an impression. The guest will pick three dinner dates purely on the basis of which menus they prefer. Over the three nights they‘ll meet the people behind the menus, going to each date‘s home for dinner.
Delicious, dishy or dismal? Will it be love at first bite? At the end of those dates, the dinner guest will choose which one of the three hosts they want to take out for a romantic dinner. All three are dolled up and ready to go but two of them will have to stay home - alone.
Jimmy Mulville, MD of Hat Trick, said: "This is a great format which combines all the excitement and anxiety of a first date with the nightmares that can happen in a kitchen. It's funny and it's compelling."
The show was commissioned by Jo Clinton-Davis, ITV Controller of Popular Factual, and Alison Sharman, ITV Director of Factual and Daytime Programmes.
Jo said: "Food and relationships are a perfect combination, and this format serves up delightful characters and delectable menus infused with wit, warmth and more than a hint of delicious play-along drama."
DINNER DATE is executive produced by Claire Collinson-Jones (Find Me The Face, Football Icon 2) for Hat Trick Productions, who said: "The series has a universality that is rare in television - everybody has cooked, everybody has gone out to dinner and almost everybody has been on a date. All three make for a classic combination of tears, tantrums and, hopefully, the greatest of all endeavours - true love."