Why does Channel 4 keep rescheduling our First Dates?
Thursday was perfect timing, but Tuesday is just not the right night for a boozy date with your TV, says Paul Jones
When someone keeps rescheduling your date, it’s easy to start feeling a bit paranoid. So seeing First Dates flit around the schedules – from Thursday to Friday and now to Tuesday – makes me worry that I might be missing an episode.
That would be as much of a faux pas as refusing to pay the service charge at a restaurant, saying your date looks five years older than she is, or telling them you’ve been having a lot of diarrhoea lately (all things that have actually happened on the show).
Because First Dates is one of the best things on TV: sweet, funny, cringey, psychologically fascinating, and reassuringly familiar to anyone who's been there.
But to me, Tuesday just isn't First Dates night. In real life, no one with work the next day would arrange a date for a Tuesday, just in case it went well.
Thursdays and Fridays are far more civilised for us viewers, too, not least because I feel it's only polite to drink along with the daters, and no-one likes a mid-week hangover.
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Yes, I know I can see it any night I want on demand, but one of the great things about First Dates is the social factor – ie talking about it on Twitter – so you need to watch at the same time as everyone else.
Actually, on that basis, let's make it Thursday not Friday – people with lives actually go out at the end of the week, and I don't want to be stood up.
First Dates returns for series six on Tuesday 15th March at 9pm on Channel 4
