Media professionals, influencers tour Ultimate Love’s guests residence

When Multichoice Nigeria, via DStv and Gotv announced the new reality show ‘Ultimate Love’ which will centre on helping single hopefuls to find love by having single men and women living together in the ‘Love Residence’ for eight weeks, Nigerians wondered what the organisers were up to, especially after Big Brother Nigeria.

Friday Treat had an ultimate experience of a night’s stay with 17 other media professionals in the ‘Love Residence’,48 hours before the show’s premiere to get a first-hand feel of what it is to be a resident at the luxury apartment built for its purpose by MultiChoice Nigeria.

We were received by the DStv and Gotv representatives, among other production staff, who took us round the production and audiovisual rooms, to give insight to how the show would be run. The equipment was noticeably state of the art, 4K cameras with fibre optic transmission to give viewers the best transmission live.

We met the technical crew to see the guys manning the sound, audio and practically everything needed to make the show a success story.

After the tour, we were ushered into the ‘Love Pad’ and its offerings, which were simply amazing. The all new house was luxuriously decorated, with mood light, paintings, artworks and graffiti to set the mood for the show. There was also a chatroom, a ‘therapy’ room (to be used by Aunty when guiding the couples), and an open glass booth which we were told would be used by the guests to confer with their chosen relatives, exes, etc. Definitely, more would be revealed during the course of the show.

The Ultimate Love reality show, in its first season, will see love guests paired as couples and would compete for the ultimate prize of N5million, a sponsored traditional wedding and a house which would be presented to them a year after they have successfully lived together as a married couple.

Interestingly, the show differs from the Big Brother show in many ways. Love guests, not house mates will be able to engage with the outside world via select relatives and acquaintances, there is a clock in the love pad, there are butlers to provide special needs and most importantly, an ‘Aunty’ in person of Adesuwa Onyenokwe, a thoroughbred professional who will provide guidiance and counseling, where necessary.

The night was fun, as we all engaged in different activities that lasted up till the early morning. The love pad is well stocked with every need and would, in the next eight weeks offer exciting conversations within it.

Each day for the contestants will be structured with routine jobs and challenges, all designed to help the singles find the perfect partner and then to put that new-found love through its paces. The core themes throughout the show will be love and culture. These themes are the fabric of the house and will be woven throughout the weekly challenges that the couples need to participate in.

Surely, it is going to be interesting watching young women and men trying to find love in just eight weeks. Is this possible? Well, stay tuned to DStv channel 198 and Gotv channel 29 to find out!
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Ultimate Love: Now that MultiChoice Nigeria has finally listened

The largest pay TV company in Nigeria , MultiChoice, started airing a new reality TV show called ‘Ultimate Love’ on Sunday. The show is featuring 16 strangers — male and female — in an undisclosed location, nicknamed the ‘love pad’, as they embark on a journey to find love. Don’t lose sleep yet, as the structured campaigns so far about the show have made it clear that the show is going to be different from another show, Big Brother Naija.

In Ultimate Love, the organisers have promised to give viewers a breath of fresh air. The show promises viewers a peek into the lives of eight males and females who are serious about finding the right partners and settling down. While unveiling the show last November, the Chief Executive Officer, MultiChoice Nigeria reminded the public that reality shows are loved by audiences because they show real people experiencing real life happenings and situations, thereby connecting viewers and fans on a personal and relatable level. More so, a show that explores love will have more resonance with the audience.

Known as Nigeria’s first dating reality TV show, Ultimate Love promises to guide these participants to their better halves, as well as to smoothen the transition of the winning couple into husband and wife by providing a lavish traditional wedding, a dream home and cash prizes.

The show plans to pull this off by engaging the services of a counsellor that will be fondly called ‘Aunty’. For those who are familiar with BBNaija, this counsellor will be playing the role of Biggie but in a cleverly disguised form. She will be visible to the participants and will be acting as a guide in their quest to find the right partner, while the couples, who will be under the keen watch of cameras and microphones, will interact with her daily. This calls to mind the unique process that leads to marriage these days in our society where intending couples are subjected to marriage counselling for months to keep them abreast of issues such as compatibility, conflict resolution and the like that will ensure a stable union.

But just like BBNaija, the show will be audience-driven. In this sense, the viewers will be rooting for their favourite couples; people who will generally, I hope, be more decent, culturally-compliant and more attuned to the values of marriage and society than those that starred in BBNaija. This has to be so, especially since the organisers have been selling the show on the familiar and popular steroids of being a fully made in Nigeria show that will be driven by locally inspired activities and mores.

For the show to live up to its name, viewers will want to see a radical shift in the make up of these participants that will be taking our time for about two months. We want to see people who hold the institution of marriage in high regard and will be on the lookout for decency. Though it’s a reality show, where the lives of these participants will be unscripted, I hope that I will be able to watch it with my teenage daughters unlike BBNaija that was a no-go-area in my home because of its propensity to shift towards adult contents without warning…

Also, the various religious leaders didn’t spare the show for its adult contents. They warned that the kissing, hugging and skimpy dresses were capable of leading young minds to the wide gates of damnation.

With the ‘Ultimate Love’ show now on, I want to be able to heave a sigh of relief for the reality TV show. I will like to say to my children, that “finally, MultiChoice Nigeria has listened”.

• This article was written by Derin Akinpelu from Ikeja, Lagos.