TV dating shows
THEY say love is blind, but in the land of TV dating shows, it’s still important to have a good-looking host. Enter Laura Dundovic, former Miss Australia and the leggy presenter of Dating in the Dark Australia, a reality show in which contestants go on dates in a specially created dark room.
Participants don’t see what their dates look like until the end of the show, at which point they can decide if they would like to pursue a relationship in the real world.
The second series is screening on Fox8 and Dundovic says it’s a different beast from the first. ”I find this series a lot funnier,” she says. ”It’s very cheeky.”
The first episode was a case in point. One contestant, a stripper, decided to wear her sexiest lingerie on a date in the dark room. Conveniently, her male counterpart was wearing only his boxers and the pair wasted no time getting acquainted. The contestants might be in the dark but the cameras capture every MA-rated move with high-definition night vision.
”My brief this year was to make it a bit raunchier,” says the show’s Scottish-born executive producer, Marty Benson (I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, This is David Gest). ”The executive producer last year said to me that they had just serial internet daters coming to the casting. This year we’ve had people who just love the show, who just think it would be good fun to be on it, which is great.”