Oh, how I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall at Netflix HQ. More specifically, I’d like to be in the room where producers think up new concepts for its maddening dating multiverse, which, in the past five years, has pumped out dozens of formulaic social experiments featuring conventionally hot people all disenchanted with the modern dating landscape. There’s been Love Is Blind — where singles date through a wall and get engaged sight unseen — its horny sibling Too Hot To Handle, Ultimatum: Marry or Move On (about couples who definitely shouldn’t be together), and the all-star series Perfect Match, a repurposing of multiverse alumni to date, again and again.
“Whatever next?” I hear you ask. Well, Netflix’s latest riff on the theme is Age of Attraction, where singles aged between 22 and 60 date without knowing each other’s ages. There’s just one rule: no asking about age. Instead, contestants must piece things together through cultural slip-ups and missing references — whether that’s blank stares at The Hunger Games, confusion over The Powerpuff Girls, or an inability to place a Taylor Swift song.
