Age of Attraction (2026)
Since the beginning, the landscape of Reality TV dating shows has been dominated by youth. Shows like The Bachelor (2002-) and The Bachelorette (2003-), Love Island (2015-), Too Hot to Handle (2020-2024), and more recently Love is Blind (2020-), have all been dominated by white participants or participants of colour who too often adhere to narrow white standards of beauty. But what has also been missing is any real diversity in terms of age – at least until The Golden Bachelor (2023-) and The Golden Bachelorette (2024-). But now to those shows Netflix has added Age of Attraction (2026-).
Filmed in stunning Whistler and Vancouver, B.C., the episodic show brought dozens of attractive heterosexual singles together to mix and mingle and speed date before allowing them to pursue group and individual dates in a gorgeous wilderness resort atmosphere complete with hiking, white water rafting, mountain biking, pickle balling, and ziplining. Yep, these folks are quite sporty, fit, and athletic. So, while there is not a big shift in terms of TV ideals of attractiveness, there is indeed a shift in the perception of age suitability, and blessedly, hair politics and complexion bias for the black participants.
The premise? Well, these beautiful people showed up prepared to date in search of a long-term, committed partner, but also prepared not to divulge their age to the people they met. The entire premise is to see if people can engage, connect, and perhaps even fall in love without the baggage/bias of ageism clouding their judgements. The path of progress was initiated when either participant, woman or man, invited another to a special room where promise rings could be exchanged. It was only at this point when they would stop dating others and finally divulge their ages. In many cases, the older participant was surprised by the youthfulness of the younger and the younger, staggered by the age of the older? This is where we could surmise that the producers and casting director deliberately picked people who did not look their age; meaning in the case of the older participants, people who are aging well! And certainly, the three “older” black participants who coupled up all prove the old adage that “black don’t crack”!
By the time the show leaves Whistler for Vancouver, six couples, each with one decidedly younger and one decidedly older partner, have been formed. Interestingly, of the six couples, one is black (older black man and younger black woman), three are cross-racial (older black woman and younger Lebanese man; older black man and younger white woman; older white woman and younger white and Asian man), and two are white. It is the black couple that ended up having the largest age gap, 30 years! But their woes, if any, may not emerge from the three-decade age gap, but the fact that he gave an evasive answer to her questions about being a father (leading her to believe he was not, back in Whistler) or that she claims to be celibate but still wants sexual gratification that does not include intercourse. (Come again?) Another noted deception was when the younger Lebanese man failed to disclose that he had kissed another participant (an older white woman) to his older black female partner, a fact that she found out (uncomfortably) once face-to-face with the woman in Vancouver. Interestingly, it quickly becomes clear that emotional maturity is not the sole domain of the older participants.
It is in Vancouver where the couples move in together and eventually expose their partners to their “real lives” including, potentially, friends and family. (Let the judgement begin!) So, it becomes clear that a part of their navigation of their paths forward and towards potential lifelong love is whether they can withstand the often well-intentioned, but narrow-minded judgements of the outside world. And for some couples, those judgements will not be merely from friends, or parents, but from grown-ass children. For our part, we wish them all luck!
Is Age of Attraction going to change your life? Likely not. But it is a long-awaited departure from many of the ageist and racist biases of the two-decade history of Reality TV dating shows, and for that alone we say, well done!