Channel 10 and 10 Play are waving bon voyage to Princess Cruises ship, Regal Princess, as it takes off for the trip of a lifetime. If you’ve been dreaming of a sunshine-filled cruise around the Mediterranean – and perhaps a holiday romance – then pack your bags for The Real Love Boat.
Cruise director Hannah Ferrier, head of entertainment Daniel Doody, and Princess Cruises’ Captain Paolo Arrigo will guide the singles through the relationship gauntlet as they sail around Spain, Greece, France, Italy, Turkey and Montenegro.
Top: Paolo Arrigo. Bottom left to right: Hannah Ferrier, Darren McMullen and Daniel Doody
Mediaweek spoke with host Darren McMullen, Paramount ANZ head of entertainment Stephen Tate, and Eureka producer Emma Lamb ahead of the show’s premiere on October 5th.
It’s been a rough few years for the cruise industry, with travel screeching to a halt all over the globe. As people dust off their passports, Lamb and Tate say that this is why it’s the “perfect time” to go ahead with The Real Love Boat.
Lamb: “It’s a time when the world is opening up again, and people are really excited about the world of travel. For us, combining that with a reality dating format was super exciting.”
Tate: “What’s really interesting is how many Australians were getting on and off the ship in every port. Every time we pulled into a port – Marseille, or Gibraltar, or whatever – there were bunches of Aussies that were getting on and off. The Australian cruising scene is alive and well.”
Keeping the show on the road – or ocean – is host Darren McMullen. He says he got on board with The Real Love Boat after a call to Eureka’s CEO.
McMullen: “At first I couldn’t really get my head around it. I know the guys over at Eureka, so I called my friend Chris Culvenor – as it turns out, he was the one that developed the show and created it. I said, mate, help me wrap my head around this.
“He said, ‘it’s going to be huge. Think of the biggest budget set you’ve ever seen in your life – it’s literally a billion dollar set. You’re going to be on this huge cruise ship, you’re going to be sailing the Mediterranean with a bunch of singles. It’s like Love Island meets Below Deck’.
“On paper that’s what the show was. In reality, it became a whole lot more.”
The Real Love Boat isn’t the first dating format to sail into the Australian market. For Tate, however, the thing that sets the show apart is that it puts all of its singles on an equal level.
Tate: “We took a look at all of the dating shows in the market and asked ‘how do we want to attack this?’
“One of the things that Emma and the team at Eureka have done so well is they’ve created a dating format that genuinely has gender equality. The power shift is equal and it shifts in every episode. It’s really exciting to watch.”
The singles are a big part of the magic for McMullen as well, who says that two of the show’s major assets are its honesty and its cast.
McMullen: “First and foremost, we don’t over glamorise it. It is a beautifully shot show, but we leave in warts and all. If there’s a mistake, we leave that in, we break that fourth wall and let the audience watching it in on the joke. It fit that funny, not taking yourself too seriously nature of the show.
“The other thing that sets it apart is that these aren’t the quintessential genetically blessed talent that you normally get on all these kinds of shows. You see the same people on all these shows you’ve seen for years – incredibly muscly with tattoo sleeves, and these gorgeous six-foot-one blonde girls. This is a great cross section of normal Australians, whatever that means.”
When choosing the cast to take along on the cruise of a lifetime, Lamb had a few particular things she says the team were keeping an eye out for.
Lamb: “You always want to make sure that you’re getting genuine people who are looking for love, I think that’s hugely important. We wanted people that had a multitude of different reasons for taking part in the show.
“We had people on the series who had fallen into bad patterns and wanted to try a new way of dating. What better way to do that than to go on a cruise around the Mediterranean and hopefully have a holiday romance?”
Tate: “The ship itself created an environment that really intensified all of those feelings. Essentially, it created a situation where they were incredibly invested in the process.”
The original Love Boat series of the 70s and 80s was a scripted series rather than a reality show. McMullen and Lamb say that despite the differences in format, sprinkles of the original series can be found all through The Real Love Boat.
Andy Warhol and Gavin Macleod in The Love Boat
McMullen: “We leaned into the cheesiness a little bit – not within the context of the drama that’s going on in the relationships, but certainly around the cast of characters. We have Hannah Ferrier and Daniel Doody who play the head of entertainment and the cruise director. Then we have the captain. Captain Paolo is just such a dream boat and amazing talent – and he’s the real captain!”
Lamb: “We were super keen to steer into all the things that people love about the original Love Boat – the graphics and the tone of the show speak to that. It’s a fun fantasy world married together with that contemporary modern dating show.”
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Top Image: Stephen Tate, Emma Lamb, Darren McMullen