All you need is e-love

>> TV show on dating could prove to be addictive pleasure

by JULIET WATERS

Last year we watched reality TV in its terminal stages. So cynics won’t expect much from e-love, a TV documentary series about one of the most painful psychic challenges known to humans—the first date. But if a couple of demo tapes are anything to go by, e-love may turn out to be a very addictive guilty pleasure.
It helps that voyeurism is balanced with quality filmmaking from Cineflix, the Montreal-based production company that has scored other specialty channel hits like Dogs With Jobs and Birth Stories.
Couples featured in e-love have never met in person but have been corresponding for a while and have already fallen in love online (without the help of the filmmakers). Viewers get to know them in their home towns, then watch them spend a weekend together. When couples click it’s a poignant experience, when they don’t it’s—well—“crushing.”
“At first we found these couples mostly through word of mouth,” co-executive producer André Baro explains. Filming demos here cut a few costs, so there will be four, possibly five Montrealers featured in the first season
Nathalie is 34 and recently divorced. She met Lee, a 29-year-old Brit in a chat room while he was laid up after a motorcycle accident. Homely (by TV standards), Lee is hilarious. In mock panic, he phones Nathalie up the night before she flies to England to drone in his best Beatles’ accent “I missed me period... I think I’m pregnant.” On arrival, he reassures her that he’s happy she’s not ugly and that he’s bought about 50 condoms. Add Nathalie’s great laugh and you can’t not root for them.
John, a 37-year-old Montreal business man, is successful, stylin’, attractive (by TV standards) and also recovering from a recent divorce. Patti, an “aspiring” Vancouver actress, gets about 50 e-mails a day from online personals. They wander through their perfect urban apartments, nervously sipping wine and explaining how they fell in love with more than just each other’s publicity shots. They each lift weights in preparation for the day when Patti will fly to Montreal. Surprisingly, e-love handles their excruciating date with taste and compassion.
We only get the first date weekend, so who really knows what eventually happens with these couples. But an interactive Web site will post updates on their love lives.
e-love starts its first season this April on WTN. Since it will also air in the U.S. and the U.K., Montrealers might find themselves quite the sought-after cyber lovers.: