Before ‘Finding Prince Charming’: The Brief History of Gay Dating Shows
The first dating show featuring a cast of all gay men has been announced. Finding Prince Charming will air on the Logo channel and will be hosted by Lance Bass.
Similar to The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, Finding Prince Charming features 13 suitors living together in the same house and all vying for the attention of “the nation’s most eligible gay heartthrob.” Who that may be has yet to be announced.
Gay dating shows have existed before Finding Prince Charming, but they’ve always had a twist — twists that have ranged from the ridiculous to the tone-deaf.
In 2003, Bravo premiered Boy Meets Boy, a reality series that you’d think would be pretty straightforward, no pun intended. But instead, the bachelor was faced with a group of suitors that included gay men and men who were pretending to be gay.
Fox debuted Playing It Straight in 2007, another punnily-named program with a gotcha-style catch. A woman dated a group of guys but had to identify which were gay and which were straight. The guys in turn had to “act” straight, presumably to throw off her “gaydar.” It was confusing for all parties involved.
In 2007, using the same tired recipe, Lifetime aired Gay, Straight, or Taken? which tasks a woman with figuring out whether three guys are … I mean, c’mon … you can fill in the blanks.
And last, there was 2007’s A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, which had the titular star date both men and women.
So, it might count as progress that Finding Prince Charming doesn’t seem to have any sort of twist to it. I mean, it will definitely have all the cheesy, totally produced, that-can’t-be-real hallmarks expected of the genre, but that just puts it on equal footing with all the other mainstream dating shows out there.
WATCH: Finding Prince Charming host Lance Bass explains why he stayed in the closet:
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