Chris Coelen knows what makes a TV show work. As the CEO of Kinetic Content, his current slate of shows includes Lifetime’s “Married at First Sight,” Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” and “The Ultimatum,” just to name a few.
Now, he’s teaming up with Bravo for the second time, following 2020’s “Spy Games.” In Kinetic’s latest unscripted series, “Love Without Borders,” five singles are looking to change the way they’re looking for love — and where they’re looking. They drop everything and fly across the globe to meet their match with the help of relationship expert Arica Angelo.
“It’s an idea that I really liked and it resonated with me. I felt like it had some residence within the culture. There’s a statistic that I saw in 2016 that said something like 60 million Americans, if given the opportunity to leave the country and be set up somewhere else, they would take that,” Coelen tells Variety. “And that was 2016. A lot has transpired since 2016.”
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Like most of his projects, Coelen also felt he could relate to the premise personally.
“At certain points in my life, I was stuck in a rut professionally. I felt like my geographic location was a hindrance to find love, find someone that I wanted to be with. I felt like ‘Oh, my God, I really need to leave Los Angeles and moved to Oregon for some air, and that’s when I’m gonna find the woman of my dreams,'” he recalls. “I would think to myself, ‘This is never gonna happen in Los Angeles.'”
Ultimately, he was wrong but he knows that he’s not alone in that feeling.
“I think that’s very relatable for people who not only want to find love — who doesn’t want to find love? — but also, many people feel like they want to change their lives,” says Coelen. “I think this is a show that’s really rooted in that idea of people who feel like they want to change their lives as much as they want to find love.”
“Love Without Borders” premieres Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 9 p.m. ET.
