ABC's The Celebrity Dating Game can’t seem to decide whether it’s a straight remake of a classic format or a mockery of it

The Guardian

ABC's new game show tries to distinguish itself from past iterations of The Dating Game with Zooey Deschanel and Michael Bolton as co-hosts. But what it ends up being is an unsatisfactory mess, says Stuart Heritage. As Heritage points out, "Deschanel is many things – a brilliant actor, a seasoned singer – but on the basis of the first couple of episodes, her talents don’t quite stretch to 'reading from a teleprompter without looking genuinely terrified.'" But, says Heritage, The Celebrity Dating Game does benefit from one legitimately strange format quirk: Bolton as co-host. "What that means in reality is that, for the bulk of each episode, he sits silently next to a grand piano," says Heritage. "He might offer the odd bizarre and apparently off-the-cuff response – when a guest asks how he is, he shrugs 'I’m busy with this' – but for the most part he is simply set dressing. Until it happens."