COURTING AT FORTY

Davina McCall talks to Ellie Muir about her new show in which middle-aged entrants get a second chance to find love

-  Ellie Muir

Davina McCall was bored. She was fed up with watching bikiniclad, 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). The setting, a Sussex country mansion, resembles that of The Traitors.

The show 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.

The series has had an uncertain journey to the screen. Last year, McCall contacted ITV in the hope that her concept would be a hit with producers. “I wrote an email to Amanda [Stavri, commissioning editor of Reality] at ITV like, ‘Hello, It’s Davina here,’” explains the 55-year-old presenter, speaking on a panel at ITV’s studios. “I said, ‘I think we should do this show, like a Love Island but for mid-lifers. So I wrote out five bios of friends of mine, like one friend who had lost her husband in Afghanistan. I really went to town and I just planted it there.”