No one anticipated the success of Our Perfect Wedding. It was baffling to think that a show about people planning their weddings would become something of national interest. Now in its fifth season, the show is one of Mzansi Magic’s most successful projects to date.
Out of that came Our Perfect Proposal which has done fairly well compared to the original show. Now, to challenge that success, is Date My Family, another reality show coming to Mzansi Magic.
Like Our Perfect Wedding, the show takes us into the homes of ordinary South Africans to explore their dating patterns. In the first segment, we meet Aggracious Mahlangu, who is looking for love. She tells us what works for her in a relationship and then we see the families of three men whom she could potentially date. Before she gets to choose one of them, she has to visit their families and assess them and based on what she learns about the families she must guess which guy is best suited for her. Tricky, right? Right.
The things Mahlangu learns from the families aren’t too informative when it comes to the actual men. This is because while people are related by blood, they remain individuals. If you are into looks and judge what the potential love interest looks like according to their siblings, then you will be disappointed because again, while siblings might resemble each other, they could look identical.
Spolier alert ahead....
Mahlangu made a choice she ended up regretting, thanks to judging by family looks. With this being reality TV, she could not hide her disappointment when she met her prey. It was like catching a gold fish at a shark fishing expedition.
undefinedThe one thing worth mentioning is that this shows comes to you thanks to a partnership between Mzansi Magic and Connect TV, the same people behind Our Perfect Wedding. Other shows that the company has churned out include Cula Sibone and Bounce. Of interest is the fact the TV mogul Basetsana Khumalo is part of Connect TV and, given her success on Top Billing, we will be seeing more groundbreaking TV from this crew. If we look at their general portfolio it is easy to see that their formula is simple; they cash in on popular topics that we discuss every day and cleverly format them into TV shows.
When international shows like Say Yes to the Dress or Don’t Tell the Bride made waves on our TVs, the Connect TV gang must have had a light bulb moment and thought of creating Our Perfect Wedding. It made sense because there are so many weddings in South Africa and they would not run out of content.
Now with Date My Family, again, we hear about people dating all the time, but to make it exciting, the show removes the main component (the bachelor/bachelorette), then the subject of each episode blindly goes into the relationship based on their first impressions of the family. That’s genius.
• Catch Date My Family on Mzansi Magic (DStv channel 161) every Sunday at 8pm.