Swiping America is the newest LGBTQ-inclusive dating show to spice up your TV sets
Swiping America is the newest queer inclusive dating show (Max/ YouTube)
Swiping America is a romantic documentary series following four singletons looking for love across the United States – and it’s queer inclusive.
If you’re the only person reading this without access to a working internet connection or television, you may not have noticed that we’re in the middle of a queer dating-show renaissance.
BBC’s I Kissed a Boy, hosted by Dannii Minogue, sees queer men search for love by giving each other a snog before any other interaction. Ultimatum features five queer women giving their respective partners a dealbreaker over the course of a few weeks that ends in either marriage or a break-up. Paramount+’s Love Allways will showcase a queer spin on the Bachelor format, complete with a pansexual bachelorette.
The latest addition to that list is Max’s Swiping America – and while not all four of the show’s pivotal cast members are queer, the “romantic documentary” features queer inclusivity at its best.
From the creator’s of fierce drag docu-series We’re Here, Swiping America will “follow a group of diverse singles from New York City (Ashleigh, Kesun, Kris, Reagan) on an introspective, eight-city dating app journey, as they explore personal issues around sex, relationships, love and connection.”
While Kesun Lee and Reagan Baker make up the heterosexual half of the cast, Ashleigh Warren is a queer woman who told Cosmopolitan that, “in true lesbian fashion, [she] had just ended a six-week bicoastal situationship” when she decided to go on the show.
Kris, whose full name is Krishnanand Kelkar, is a gay data scientist who similarly had “just been through a rough break up.” As a side note, Kelkar’s instagram makes for very pleasant viewing.
Travelling through cities like Miami, Austin, New Orleans and Seattle, the foursome will have producer-curated matches set up for them in a series of blind dates.
The trailer features sneak peeks at some of those dates, including Kris at dinner with adult film star Diego Sans – we wouldn’t advise Googling that name on your work laptop.
According to Swiping America‘s press release, the group will forge “a special friendship with each other over the course of the season” and “their journey [will] culminate in Hawaii, where they hand-pick their best match from the season and ultimately decide whether their relationship can go the distance”.
Swiping America will launch on newly rebranded HBO service Max on 15 June with the first two of six episodes.
