{"id":8760,"date":"2022-03-04T10:49:03","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T15:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/courtships-new-old-take-reality-dating\/"},"modified":"2022-03-14T12:23:02","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T16:23:02","slug":"the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/","title":{"rendered":"The Courtship\u2019s New (& Old) Take on Reality Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big. Noisy. Loud. That\u2019s 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. \u201cBig swings. We are competing with Friends<\/em> and Seinfeld<\/em> and Game of Thrones<\/em>; the sum total of every piece of media ever created is two clicks away. You have to be loud to cut through.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for Nurre,\u00a0The Courtship<\/i>, which premiered on NBC and is now streaming on Peacock, does just that. \u201cA Jane Austen-inspired Regency dating experiment? Count me in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series, initially commissioned by Peacock as Pride & Prejudice: An Experiment in Romance<\/em>, whisks its heroine\u2014Nicole R\u00e9my\u2014off 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.<\/p>\n

Nurre notes that the show\u2019s timing is perfect on several fronts. \u201cThe modern dating world is failing legitimately good candidates,\u201d says the (happily married) executive producer of the show. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason someone as smart and charismatic and beautiful and successful as Nicole is should be single. That\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show began to be pitched ahead of the Bridgerton<\/em> craze that took hold at the end of 2020 and was commissioned by Peacock last summer. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen things move this quickly since the early celeb dating shows of the \u201990s,\u201d Nurre says. \u201c\u2018We want it. We want you to shoot it. Go.\u2019 It\u2019s been pedal to the metal ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

The casting process for the show\u2019s heroine was extensive, Nurre says. \u201cThere were plenty of heroines that would have been great on their own on the show, but their court wasn\u2019t nearly as interesting. We got so lucky\u2014but 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\u2019s the one. Then you meet her family. It\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show is hosted by Rick Edwards, whose credits include the BBC One quiz show Impossible<\/em>. \u201cWhen I saw him, I said, I\u2019m worried he might upstage all the suitors! Right when we were going to write him off, we said, Maybe that\u2019s a good thing? Maybe that\u2019s exactly what this show needs. I can\u2019t say enough fantastic things about him. He\u2019s awesome in the truest sense of the word, on camera and off. He doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t felt like that since the early days of working with Gordon [Ramsay] or Will Arnett. You just sit back and go, This is magic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bar was as high for R\u00e9my\u2019s love interests, Nurre says. \u201cAre there a couple of guys in there that maybe could have worked on another dating show? I\u2019m 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\u2019s just abs and whatnot. Beyond that, our cast, in general, was comfortable with this elevated concept because they are elevated candidates. It\u2019s about finding lasting love. A better way of dating and matchmaking. To do that, you\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nurre notes the attention to detail that went into staging the show\u2019s lush backdrops\u2014as well as the extensive wardrobe. \u201cBecause 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\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their Regency-style get-ups, the suitors take R\u00e9my on a range of dates to woo her. \u201cThey have horseback rides through the countryside,\u201d Nurre says. \u201cThey go boating across a lake. They have a bacchanal gathering. There\u2019s a beautiful structure on the set that was featured pretty prominently in Bridgerton<\/em>. 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\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019re able to weed out the posers. You\u2019re able to see through those chemicals that kick in when you\u2019re not in love yet, but you\u2019re in lust and think, This is the one, and someone in your court is like, He might be full of s**t. They\u2019re doing these events while the court is observing and interacting and giving their input. That will lead Nicole to make better decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banijay Rights is handling the distribution of both the U.S. tape and format rights. \u201cWe\u2019re having lots of conversations,\u201d Nurre notes. \u201cWe hope for the success of this format so we can do it many more times, in many more places.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the format\u2019s most important signature pillars is the elimination dance, Nurre says. \u201cI hope when you watch it that it just flows smoothly. They\u2019re going to dance, and eliminate. You don\u2019t 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. R\u00e9my. You\u2019re asking her to take a rose and [decide]: Stay with me or kick rocks. That\u2019s a lot for anybody on any dating show, all the way from Cris Abrego\u2019s Flavor of Love<\/em> 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\u2019re catches. It wasn\u2019t like any of these guys were professional dancers. She\u2019s 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\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DJ Nurre, the executive VP of unscripted at Endemol Shine North America, gives TV Formats an inside look at the buzzy Jane Austen-inspired reality dating format The Courtship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":8761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,69],"tags":[1033,2438,1313,2439,2440],"class_list":["post-8760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-banijay-rights","tag-dj-nurre","tag-endemol-shine-north-america","tag-pride-prejudice","tag-the-courtship","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Courtship\u2019s New (& Old) Take on Reality Dating - TVFORMATS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Courtship\u2019s New (& Old) Take on Reality Dating - TVFORMATS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"DJ Nurre, the executive VP of unscripted at Endemol Shine North America, gives TV Formats an inside look at the buzzy Jane Austen-inspired reality dating format The Courtship.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVFORMATS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-03-04T15:49:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-14T16:23:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2017\/07\/TheCourtship-NBC-EndemolShine-322.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"319\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/\",\"name\":\"The Courtship\u2019s New (& Old) Take on Reality Dating - TVFORMATS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2022-03-04T15:49:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-14T16:23:02+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/the-courtships-new-old-take-on-reality-dating\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Courtship\u2019s New (& Old) Take on Reality Dating\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/\",\"name\":\"TVFORMATS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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