STRICTLY SOULMATES: Thursday 26th January, BBC3, 9pm
If rom-coms have taught us anything else (and they haven’t..) it’s that most girls don’t like to be left on the shelf when all their mates are getting married. Finding a decent bloke can be a tough job even for regular ladies, but when you’re a hardcore christian pushing 30, you’ve got your work cut out. Most of the good ones are already married and the pub is bit of a non-starter. So after waiting for God to “find her a man”, Katy has decided to take matters into her own hands. Go girl!
This is the first episode of Strictly Soulmates, a new series which examines the difficulty crazy religious types have trying to find other crazy religious types to marry without the help of alcohol (the love potion that God himself gave us..). It mostly focuses on Katy, who became a born-again God-botherer after her fiance ditched her just before their wedding five years back and is now hunting for a new man who’ll “come second to Jesus in her life”. That doesn’t sound like the most appetising prospect in the world, but Katy is dead nice and unpreachy girl who seems to have found the perfect bloke in Jake, a Californian who she meets at a Christian rock festival. Subsequent episodes will be concentrating on Hindus, Muslims and Jews, but tonight it’s the turn of the Christians.
Presenter Scott Mills follows the travails of another young christian called Richard, but with his search for love falling a bit flat, he gets pushed to one side. It could be his habit of reciting his CV and asking women if they can cook during first dates, but God’s plan certainly seems to involve him being crap with women. We’re sure he’ll be fine in the end.
The real crux of the whole programme is the difficult nature of dating when you can’t have sex (or in Katie’s new boyfriend’s case, even kiss!) before marriage. It’s a heartfelt story, but it’s definitely one that’s been told before and could be more interesting when we hear from some slightly less familiar faiths.
