Dates - Episodes 4 & 5 Reviews

It's the second week and instead of three episodes, Channel 4 have given us two of them and I have to admit that due to being sucked into Big Brother once again, I ended up watching both these episodes on Tuesday and Wednesday at 11pm, courtesy of Channel 4 + 1 but here's goes the reviews nonetheless ....

Episode 4: Erica & Kate

The one thing you can trust about Bryan Elsley and his shows is that we do get some decent LGBT content and this episode, whilst far from perfect nicely managed to maintain that tradition. Gemma Chan (Fresh Meat) played the rather closeted Erica who ends up meeting Kate (Katie McGrath, Merlin) and while she likes to be bossed about it a bit by the Irishwoman, she's less enamoured when Kate makes her opinions on closeted lesbians who sleep with men pretty known. Let's say Erica being in the closet is a source of contention throughout the entire episode as even when they sleep together, it's still an issue the next morning between the ladies. There's some good performances from both Chan and McGrath and the ending has a surprising moment that will have repercussions in the sixth episode. That being said, it's probably the weakest episode so far, but not by a huge margin though, 7/10.

Episode 5: David & Ellie

This one was pretty interesting. A growing strand in this series is that certain characters keep resurfacing and because of them, we end up meeting newer people as well. David (Will Mellor), still stung by Mia (Oona Chaplin) dicking him about decides to go on a date with the rather bubbly Ellie (Montanna Thompson) on his birthday in a burger bar with singing staff. More to the point is how long it took David to suss that Ellie was only 19 (which was bloody obvious from the moment she appeared) and the fact that he wanted to bail despite Ellie's desperate attempts of keeping him interested in her. Of course, it did manage to go wrong for Ellie when her attempts of getting Mia out of David's system only drove him back into her arms. I quite felt sorry for Ellie in this episode. Yes, she was a tad immature (who uses Tumblr to catalogue their sexual history?) but she seemed like a nice enough girl and hopefully we'll see her again in a future episode. I'd also cite Thompson as the standout performance of this week's episodes, 8/10.

These two episodes were solid, if not as strong as the first three we've had in the previous week. Still, this is an absolutely cracking series and I'm definitely intrigued to see where the series will go with the final four episodes, in spite of my reservations for episode 6.

Reviews for the sixth and seventh episodes will be on the blog next week.