Davina McCall was bored. She was fed up of watching bikini-clad, spray-tanned twentysomethings search for love on reality TV dating shows. She asked: what about single parents searching for a life partner? And then she had an idea: what about commissioning Love Island, but for middle-aged people?
The result is My Mum, Your Dad, which is essentially Love Island meets The Parent Trap (with a bit of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and Gogglebox mixed in there). The setting, a Sussex country mansion, resembles that of The Traitors. It follows a group of single parents who have been nominated by their grown-up children for what ITV calls a “second chance at love”. But there is a twist: the parents have no idea that their children will be watching their every move from a surveillance room – aka the bunker – down the road. There, the incognito group of “relationship experts” will witness their parents’ journeys to find love and get an opportunity to play matchmaker as they decide on the romantic fate of their mums and dads.
