Ms Porter has been on a seemingly perilous journey into the heart of love of late, going to all the places where paranoia and desperation are bedfellows. I mean, most people just go down the pub, maybe a club afterwards, and hope that the Gilette Mach 3 and aftershave will work the magic – and maybe enough pints to convince you, and your prospective mate, that you are in fact a wonderful dancer and a very charming man indeed. However, what happens when you’re all out of ideas? Dawn Porter: Mail Order Bride (Channel 4, Tuesday, 7 October, 10pm) went to find out.

Dawn Porter went off to the Eastern Bloc to look at those who decide the best way to find love, happiness… or quite possibly a dolly bird to help make the place look pretty… is by ordering yourself a wife off the internet. Now, having never looked into this myself, I never understood how it really worked. Turns out, you sign up with a specialist tour company and go to meetings where you’re guaranteed to meet some girls.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as merely turning up and saying “I’ll take her please”, and on rushes a girl desperate to get out of her country for a better life out West. So finding out what motivates the men who attend these expensive gambles, as well as the girls who attend, who better to send than Dawn Porter? From the off, as she’s proven in the past, Porter has a remarkable ability to make people open up, which they do, often to their expense as they open up just a bit too much.

As odd as some of the blokes are, in fairness, some of them seem to be pretty down-to-earth and sweet. However, it’s the odd ones that cause the most concern… and one bloke with a deranged murderers giggle, called Kevin, crops up pretty frequently, telling lies to the girls about his age, his job and there’s an air of… [i]danger[/i]… to him. He also admits to Porter that he’s fond of young ladies and he likes aggressive sex… but more on him later.

Another chap, Marc, was all swagger and cockiness, and repulses from the word go. He’s clearly got a lot of money, but there’s obviously something weird about him. I mean, there’s probably a very good reason why he’s resorting to mail order love. After a few meets with the girls, and getting nowhere, he cracks on to Porter (“there’s a connection”). This might be funny normally, as I’m certain that Dawn is well equipped to deal with persistent male advances, however, Marc’s attitude to coming on to Dawn made my heart pound in slow motion… like I’d just seen someone get punched out cold.

In one of the most uncomfortable bits of telly I’ve ever seen, Marc invades personal space and goes all breathy and tries to woo Porter with intensity. It’s made more uncomfortable by Dawn’s continual ‘no’ and “I’m just doing my job”. It seemed like a real violation. There was an element of ‘you know you want it.’ He further creeps out the entire viewing numbers by then, later, guilt tripping a girl called Irena with some crocodile tears. She was chatting to another guy – a policeman – after Marc, and he implies that this policeman is statistically likely to either get killed on the job or kill himself, topped off with grinning “I just wanted to share that with you.” He’s a horrible specimen that repulsed not only Porter, but this reviewer. He was predatory and conniving.

However, in these moments, it was great is to see Porter getting in with the punches. She asked some tough questions to the blokes signed up and the tour operator. When the tour operator is asked about Kevin (mentioned earlier) everything goes strangely silent. Porter and her crew were asked by the tour to not delve into Kevin, but Porter had no problem with pressing the matter. It made for quite uncomfortable telly, but riveting. One important question is raised by Porter – why were the tour company more concerned about their reputation, rather than the wellbeing of the girls?

To offer the flipside, Dawn spoke to a guy who had worked in the industry. Apparently, some operators employ escorts (if, indeed the girls on the websites are real in the first place) who essentially go on the date and potentially have a shag. It’s not far from prostitution. It seems that, in this game, it’s nigh on impossible to find ‘love’, or even something resembling a friendship. It seems like a lose-lose game, unless you’re the one counting the coins.

Comparisons are always a bit crappy, but there’s one slight niggle with this new run of Dawn Porter shows: They don’t run as well as the BBC equivalent. Part of me thinks it’s down to technical things like the editing process and what little nuances are left of the cutting room floor. Another part of me thinks that it suffers a little from commercial breaks. As Dawn’s shows rely on investment and that slow reveal of those she’s looking at, which gets broken up by distracting adverts. The only thing I’ll add further is that it felt like the show could’ve been a bit longer to tie up some loose ends, maybe talk to the people encountered. That said, it’s still a cracking little show which looks at some serious issues without being bushy eyebrowed and smelling of cardigans. A smart show by a smart cookie who isn’t afraid to go in over her head.

Great stuff!