DCU students to film Ultimate Wingman dating show pilot

It’s the dating show with a dash of bromance thrown in.

A pilot for Ultimate Wingman, the creation of a group of students at Dublin City University, is set to be filmed in front of a studio audience at the Helix venue next Tuesday after their lecturer, Rob Cawley from production company Screenworks, brought a class project to the attention of international distributors.

Presenter enlisted
Q102 radio presenter Robbie Kane has been enlisted to host the pilot, which the team of 10 final-year communications studies students will then edit and deliver to distributors who have already expressed interest in the format.

“After we submitted the assignment, Rob took it around during the Christmas break and a number of them came back and said they were interested, but the original project was crude and low budget, so they wanted us to come back and deliver a pilot on a bigger scale,” says Amy O’Connor, a member of the production team.

Kane is “an old pro and we’re very lucky to have him”, she says of their host.

Described by the production team as “a dating show with a twist”, Ultimate Wingman centres on three bachelors as they try to win the affections of “one lucky bachelorette”.

The catch is, the bachelors must remain off-set and it is up to their respective best mates or "wingmen" to talk up their finer points to the bachelorette - ideally, for the bachelors' sake, without making them look like an idiot.

Picture round
Items on the show include a picture round in which the wingmen have to draw their bachelors and a pre-filmed segment set in the bachelors' bedrooms.

At the end of the show, the bachelorette must pick her bachelor based solely on their wingmen’s pitches, while the winning friend is crowned “Ultimate Wingman” for his trouble.

“It’s quite unprecedented in Ireland to have a student project looked at for consideration by international distributors,” says O’Connor, who adds that the irreverent format is designed to appeal to the 18-34-year-old demographic.

“If you get the right contestants and chemistry, then there’s good scope for comedy.”