The Courtship’s New (& Old) Take on Reality Dating

Big. Noisy. Loud. That’s what it takes to make an impact with a new reality concept today, according to DJ Nurre, the executive VP of unscripted at Endemol Shine North America. “Big swings. We are competing with Friends and Seinfeld and Game of Thrones; the sum total of every piece of media ever created is two clicks away. You have to be loud to cut through.”

And for Nurre, The Courtship, which premiered on NBC and is now streaming on Peacock, does just that. “A Jane Austen-inspired Regency dating experiment? Count me in.”

The series, initially commissioned by Peacock as Pride & Prejudice: An Experiment in Romance, whisks its heroine—Nicole Rémy—off to a countryside castle, where she is courted by 16 suitors, surrounded by an entourage of friends and family who weigh in on her romantic choices.

Nurre notes that the show’s timing is perfect on several fronts. “The modern dating world is failing legitimately good candidates,” says the (happily married) executive producer of the show. “There’s no reason someone as smart and charismatic and beautiful and successful as Nicole is should be single. That’s not her fault. The swiping left and right hookup culture of dating apps has failed her. This show exists to give her what she deserves, finding the love of her life. Better courtship means a better relationship.”

The show began to be pitched ahead of the Bridgerton craze that took hold at the end of 2020 and was commissioned by Peacock last summer. “I haven’t seen things move this quickly since the early celeb dating shows of the ’90s,” Nurre says. “‘We want it. We want you to shoot it. Go.’ It’s been pedal to the metal ever since.”

The casting process for the show’s heroine was extensive, Nurre says. “There were plenty of heroines that would have been great on their own on the show, but their court wasn’t nearly as interesting. We got so lucky—but we did the work. We fell in love with her the same way you did. You see her and you know in five seconds, that’s the one. Then you meet her family. It’s like they were created in a laboratory just for reality TV. You have the ball-busting sister, the fun-loving best friend, the soft-spoken but incredibly poignant and intimidating dad and the overachieving mother who only wants the best for her daughter. She has such a successful relationship that her bar is so shockingly high. You put this together, and they are one in a billion.”

The show is hosted by Rick Edwards, whose credits include the BBC One quiz show Impossible. “When I saw him, I said, I’m worried he might upstage all the suitors! Right when we were going to write him off, we said, Maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe that’s exactly what this show needs. I can’t say enough fantastic things about him. He’s awesome in the truest sense of the word, on camera and off. He doesn’t use cue cards or a prompter. And these are not throwaway phrases. We are trying to channel our inner Jane Austen. We have a pretty talented writing team on this. So the words are well crafted, with many rounds of internal and network notes handed to him. He would sit underneath a tree, read it a couple of times, come back, crush it on take one, crush it again on take two, and then he would ad-lib. I haven’t felt like that since the early days of working with Gordon [Ramsay] or Will Arnett. You just sit back and go, This is magic.”

The bar was as high for Rémy’s love interests, Nurre says. “Are there a couple of guys in there that maybe could have worked on another dating show? I’m not going to name names, but you know. OK, that guy is hilarious, he might not be a Mensa student, but he is hilarious. He could work on a dating show where it’s just abs and whatnot. Beyond that, our cast, in general, was comfortable with this elevated concept because they are elevated candidates. It’s about finding lasting love. A better way of dating and matchmaking. To do that, you’ve got to improve the process, which we did, and you need to improve the candidates, which we did. They are all catches. And catches thrive almost no matter what you throw at them.”

Nurre notes the attention to detail that went into staging the show’s lush backdrops—as well as the extensive wardrobe. “Because of all the production happening in the midst of Covid-19 times and the supply chain issues, there were no rental dresses on planet Earth to be had. That was scary initially, so we said, We’re going to bespoke create several looks for all of our suitors and many looks for our heroine for the entire season. This is during Covid times, so that whole department was there on location, making these dress alternations. We had a full-on dress shop on location.”

In their Regency-style get-ups, the suitors take Rémy on a range of dates to woo her. “They have horseback rides through the countryside,” Nurre says. “They go boating across a lake. They have a bacchanal gathering. There’s a beautiful structure on the set that was featured pretty prominently in Bridgerton. There are dinner parties with the parents and all the etiquette that comes with that. We execute those at a very high level. But that’s not the thing that makes us the paradigm shift that this show is. The paradigm shift is that while those things are happening, her court is present. So you are not only having to charm her, you’re having to win over the court. We like to say better courtship leads to better relationships. With time and the input of friends and family, you’re able to weed out the posers. You’re able to see through those chemicals that kick in when you’re not in love yet, but you’re in lust and think, This is the one, and someone in your court is like, He might be full of s**t. They’re doing these events while the court is observing and interacting and giving their input. That will lead Nicole to make better decisions.”

Banijay Rights is handling the distribution of both the U.S. tape and format rights. “We’re having lots of conversations,” Nurre notes. “We hope for the success of this format so we can do it many more times, in many more places.”

One of the format’s most important signature pillars is the elimination dance, Nurre says. “I hope when you watch it that it just flows smoothly. They’re going to dance, and eliminate. You don’t realize that the entire crew and I were having heart palpitations up until that dance happened. You are asking a lot of an amateur. This is just Ms. Rémy. You’re asking her to take a rose and [decide]: Stay with me or kick rocks. That’s a lot for anybody on any dating show, all the way from Cris Abrego’s Flavor of Love days! People stumble just handing out a rose or not. We are asking her to do all of that, give her highs and lows, take the viewer on a bit of journey, create a little bit of tension, all while remembering the steps of a Regency dance with a guy who, maybe with one or two exceptions, has two left feet. I said they’re catches. It wasn’t like any of these guys were professional dancers. She’s a former professional dancer. She was doing three roles: dancing, almost being like a host, and then a dance instructor helping these guys hit their marks. That is one format beat that I’m so proud of. It could have fallen on its face so hard. It gets better throughout the season. Early on, it still had some clunks; there were dance moves we had to dial back because it interrupted the conversation. I think that can be adapted in any territory. It also requires a four-piece string quartet, an army of extras; it is not for the faint of heart, it is a huge show.”