Long-distance lovers meet for the first time on TV… and it will surely end in tears

Then there’s Married at First Sight and all the rest of them. God only knows what happens on Love Triangle Australia; I hope I never find out.

Unlike all of the other dating shows, in The Nevermets we are seeing people who are already in relationships with each other when the programme starts. They have maintained long-distance romances. Sarah and Jgoy have been talking on their mobiles, across continents and time zones, several times a day for two years.

Naked Attraction it ain’t. The Nevermets is much more embarrassing and also, strangely, much more naked.

In The Nevermets we start with the magic, which has grown in the lovers’ isolation from each other. Geographical separation is very romantic. Now as the voiceover, which is provided by the unconvincing Dawn French, rather disingenuously puts it, they have decided to cross the world to meet each other (because the producers asked them to, maybe?). On the whole, the UK-based Nevermets are, to a man and to a woman, examples of that rarest of modern creatures — the innocent.

In Episode 2, Mazi has been on the phone with the beautiful Dumebi for a long time. He is in Dubai. Dumebi (25) is in London and her mother is the only voice of sanity in the first two episodes. Mazi keeps sending Dumebi photos of himself posing against Lamborghini cars. “How many does he have?” asks Dumebi, enthralled. It does not seem to occur to her that there might be a lot of Lamborghinis in Dubai, and not all of them, perhaps, owned by Mazi.

Jay is only 17 and is in sixth form college in Somerset. For two years, he has been in daily contact with Veena, who lives in the Indian state of Kerala. They met in a Game of Thrones roleplay session, online (red flag there). He lied to her about his age. Then he lied to his mother about Veena’s age. Because Veena is nine years older than him.

What a great time to get on a plane and visit Veena. Jay has never been apart from his parents before. He has never had a girlfriend in real life. He has never been anywhere more foreign than Tenerife. He has never eaten Indian food — not even a takeaway — and favours sausage rolls. He steps off the plane and into what is effectively an engagement party thrown by Veena’s mother.

Veena is a social media manager and earns good money; she owns the house in which her mother and grandmother are plotting her marriage. In Indian terms, she is already a bit long in the tooth to be a bride. Veena is saying that all this pressure to marry is ridiculous, but she does nothing to stop it. Rather unfortunately for Jay, the age of consent in India is 18. Therefore this will be a chaste trip. Despite the age difference, it is Veena who seems confused and unable to deal with reality.

Then there’s Sarah, who is 38 and a catering assistant. She wants children and the clock is ticking. Jgoy, who lives in the Philippines and is 10 years younger, says he’ll get her pregnant. And also that he loves her. Sarah is a bit apprehensive about spending a lot of money to go and meet someone in a foreign country on her own. She’s had dire warnings that she will be trafficked as a sex slave — “and that was my Nan”.

Sarah has to watch the pennies but she is rich compared with Jgoy in Manila. “Oh, look at your little room,” says Sarah when he brings her to what he has decided will be their bedroom. Sometimes being innocent — of, for example, global inequality — can do more damage than cynicism.

Sarah’s caution is soon justified. He insists on choosing her outfit when they go to see his friends (red flag). His friends turn out to be two sniggering blokes (another red flag) with unfunny dirty jokes. I’m going to give up on the red flag thing now, because Sarah and Jgoy’s entire relationship — even before they met in real life — is just a forest of red flags, as indeed is the whole series. And The Nevermets plough through every single one of them, with only their convictions about true love to sustain them.

There is a dark undertone here of nefarious foreigners taking advantage of innocent Brits.

The modern belief in The One suddenly seems as limiting as the idea that the earth was flat. The series desperately needs one glorious, happy ending.

At the moment, the chances are that it will end in a lot of tears. Isn’t there a limit to how many smashed hopes we want to see? There must be a place for all this trust, for all this optimism. Unfortunately, at the moment, it just ends up online. And on TV.