Love on the Spectrum
ラブ・オン・スペクトラム ～自閉症だけど恋したい!～: オーストラリア編
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Autistic adults on first dates, with coaching; the one dating show where the questions are asked out loud.
Love on the Spectrum, made by Northern Pictures for the ABC in Australia, follows autistic young adults as they look for love. Its creators, Cian O'Clery and Karina Holden, came to it after making Employable Me. It is closer to a documentary than a game: no eliminations, no prizes. The first season aired in Australia in November 2019 and reached Netflix worldwide in July 2020. It follows seven singles, all but one of whom had never been on a date, and two established couples.
Michael, twenty-five, smartly dressed and blunt, is sick of being single and already has a ring ready; an A+ partner, he says, looks like him. A date with Amanda ends early when her anxiety makes her leave. Chloe, partly deaf and badly bullied at school, goes out with a man and with a woman and comes to suspect women suit her better. Kelvin, who is writing his own manga, is thrown when a date takes out her games console before the food arrives. Mark adores dinosaurs and can talk over anyone; Maddi wants a man who is rich, muscular, tall and as into video games as she is; Olivia, after many unrequited loves, starts looking in earnest; Andrew, who loves teddy bears and jigsaws, goes to a matchmaking party, afraid that time to start a family is running out. The relationship coach Jodi Rodgers rehearses dates with them, and Dr Elizabeth Laugeson of UCLA runs a dating boot camp. Some singles events were set up with the producers' help, as nothing like them existed.
The couples show where it can lead. Thomas, a bus driver, proposed to Ruth by taking a detour on his route; they live with her snake, Cleopatra. Jimmy and Sharnae move in together, and on a holiday at the end of the season Jimmy proposes. None of the seven singles has found a partner by then. In the second season, in 2021, Michael dated Heather and they introduced each other's parents, Mark and Chloe went on a date, and Jimmy and Sharnae married. Ruth and Thomas later married too.
Starring
Michael TheoParticipant
A formal, blunt twenty-five-year-old who longs to be a husband, keeps a ring ready and returns in the second season.
ChloeParticipant
A young woman, partly deaf and bullied at school, who dates a man and a woman and suspects women suit her better.
MarkParticipant
A sunny dinosaur lover who joins the dating boot camp and, in the second season, dates Chloe.
RuthParticipant
Half of an engaged couple, both autistic, who shares her home with Thomas and her snake, Cleopatra.
ThomasParticipant
A bus driver and public-transport enthusiast who proposed to Ruth by detouring from his usual route.
Jodi RodgersRelationship coach
A relationship and sexuality educator who rehearses dates with the singles and coaches them on conversation.
Why it matters
Love on the Spectrum sets out to dismantle a misconception, that autistic people are content not to date. It shows people who want love badly and who are frank about how hard its unwritten rules are to read, and in doing so it makes those rules visible for everyone. Critics widely praised its warmth. Autistic reviewers were more divided: they liked much of it, but objected to a cutesy score and framing that could make adults seem childlike, to the time given to parents rather than the daters, and to coaching built on neurotypical norms. Both responses belong to what it offers. It pictures intimacy in which asking directly what the other person feels is not awkward but necessary, and it also reminds anyone watching that being seen kindly is not the same as being seen as an equal.