What makes a chap irresistible: money or pineapple aftershave? CLAUDIA CONNELL reviews last night’s TV
Five Guys A Week
Joanna Lumley’s Hidden Caribbean: Havana To Haiti
Rating: 
Television execs can’t seem to get enough of unconventional dating shows. Netflix’s Love Is Blind, which premiered last month, saw complete strangers go from dating to marriage within three weeks.
Getting strangers to tie the knot in Married At First Sight didn’t produce any happy-ever-afters, so Channel 4 is trying a different tack in its bizarre new dating series Five Guys A Week.
Marketing consultant and single mother Amy, 34, was looking for love. Instead of dating men one at a time in the traditional way, she invited five prospective boyfriends to move in with her for no real reason other than for viewers’ titillation.
First to arrive at her home was Christian, a banker who liked to wear aftershave that smelt of pineapples because, apparently, that’s what women like. He’s been watching too many Herbal Essences shampoo adverts.
Getting strangers to tie the knot in Married At First Sight didn’t produce any happy-ever-afters, so Channel 4 is trying a different tack in its bizarre new dating series Five Guys A Week (star Amy centre is pictured with this episode’s contestants)
Christian had an endless supply of mangled metaphors and made a lot of money. We know about the cash because he dropped his wealth and designer wardrobe into the conversation at every opportunity.
Glen, a father of four whose wife had run off with a 19-year-old, seemed far too wounded to be on the show. ‘The last time I was dating was before Justin Bieber was born,’ he lamented.
Next was Scott, who had quit his job at a bank to become a country and western singer and loved to get his guitar out at the end of the night, whether people wanted to hear him play or not.
Stuntman Michael and bewildered-looking surfer Trystan completed the five. Amy’s job was to pick the men off one by one, until she was left with whomever she felt the most connection with.
Poor Trystan never had time to get his bearings as he was booted out of the house the morning after they all moved in.
Marketing consultant and single mother Amy, 34, (pictured) was looking for love
During the week the men met Jackie, Amy’s no-filter mum who, over Sunday lunch, quizzed her daughter’s suitors about their sexual prowess and confessed to a fondness for spanking. Any bloke who can survive that is a keeper.
In the end, Amy picked Christian. Perhaps it was the money or maybe he was right all along — women can’t resist the smell of pineapple.
Unlike Love Island, there was no swimsuit parading or humiliation and the women called the shots, making it curiously watchable. That said, I don’t think mum Jackie should be in any hurry to buy a hat.
Speaking of hats, Joanna Lumley was in desperate need of one for her humidity hair in Cuba.
During the making of Hidden Caribbean: Havana To Haiti (ITV) the actress was held up at gunpoint by bandits while driving in Haiti.
During the making of Hidden Caribbean: Havana To Haiti (ITV) Joanna Lumley (pictured) was held up at gunpoint by bandits while driving in Haiti
Thankfully, her bodyguards stepped in and she escaped unscathed. Last night, she started her journey in Cuba, where nothing quite so dramatic happened. In fact, Joanna’s constant battle with frizzy hair was as exciting as it got.
Joanna was on a mission to cram as much as she could into her brief stay. She started in Havana, with its extraordinary sense of faded grandeur.
Next, there was the man who’d grown the world’s largest fern.
She breezed through the island calling everyone ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart’ and was in raptures about everything and everyone. It was frenetic and yet superficial and unsatisfying.
Joanna has presented some fabulous travel shows in her time and has an easy and engaging rapport with everyone she meets, but last night’s show lacked her normal razzle-dazzle.