What a viewBest shows to stream this week – Love is Blind: Japan and Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
- Imagine forming meaningful relationships by talking to people you can’t see, to the point where you agree to marry? That’s the premise of Love is Blind: Japan
- Imagine a time when the NBA wasn’t a global sporting behemoth. That it is today has a lot to do with the LA Lakers’ rise, charted in docudrama Winning Time
In an age in which image is everything, and anyone not continually posting on Instagram is tantamount to an Orwellian “unperson”, a reality dating series that seemingly suggests looks don’t matter must be operating at a considerable distance from that reality. Mustn’t it?
Love is Blind: Japan (Netflix), part of a spin-off franchise of the original American show, offers a modern take on the arranged marriage, insofar as the future spouses don’t meet until after they are committed to a trip down the aisle.
Not that they have no say in matters: the “contestants” do the arranging themselves, not with the aid of visual clues but by talking to potential matches through a wall in a series of dating “pods” (essential, really, when one of the women turns out to be a former Miss World Japan).
Bizarre though the arrangement may sound, it does, through 11 episodes of surprisingly emotional vicissitudes, see the show’s stars form meaningful relationships simply by talking to and asking questions of each other, then recording their impressions the old-fashioned way, in a notebook. (Midori, 30, in consulting, even admits that when dating she makes a spreadsheet of men’s qualities. Who said romance was dead?)
By repeated chats with each member of the opposite sex, almost amounting to interviews for the vacant position of husband or wife, the “contestants” home in on their chosen ones. Inevitably, competition for certain catches arises and raises the tension, but not to the point where the rejected candidates are denied sympathy from their new, on-set friends, such is the feeling that they’re all in this psychological experiment together.
The age range is wide, from 23 to 56, as are the professions – yoga instructor, comedian, restaurateur, entrepreneur, musician, hairdresser, fitness trainer, basketball coach and more – perhaps to give every viewer someone special to cheer on. But while pairing off in the studio is all very well, what will happen out in the real world, when families enter the picture and engagements made earlier must be turned into actual marriages?