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| On the road … Florence and AJ Odudu in Manhunting With My Mum. Photograph: Channel 4 |
AJ Odudu’s mother, Florence, is talking about the consummation of her arranged marriage to AJ’s father, a man she had just met. “It was strange when you go to bed,” says Florence, doubled over with laughter. “Switch off the lights!” “Oh God, I don’t know if I want to hear this,” AJ wails, mortified. The peril of travels-with-my-mother programmes is that the mums always steal the show. Florence, bursting with energy and charisma, does so immediately, even though her daughter – beautiful, sequin-catsuited and with a pleasing Blackburn accent – is a sparkling protagonist in Manhunting With My Mum (Channel 4).
TV presenter AJ is single; her mother and father had an arranged marriage, which has lasted more than 40 years and produced eight children. Florence wishes her daughter had a husband: “Maybe by now she would have made me two babies,” she says, beadily. And so they go off to Nigeria, AJ’s parents’ birthplace, to look for a man.
You may as well start high, so first up is an eligible prince. “Move over Meghan Markle,” says AJ. Joshua is prince of the Ajara Vetho kingdom, just west of Lagos, though AJ is a bit disappointed. “I don’t know if I’m a bit overdressed,” she says of her sensational yellow jumpsuit and heels. “I’m walking around on sandy ground. There’s goats.” The life of a princess doesn’t look much fun – it seems to mainly involve cooking food, then serving it to the men, kneeling at their feet. This isn’t going to work for AJ. Would Joshua ever bow to her? “I can’t be bowing down to you, as a man,” he says. “That means you’re not submissive.” He cries when she leaves.
Florence didn’t think much of him. “He didn’t give me anything to [think] wow,” she pronounces. The real relationship that is developing is the one between AJ and Florence. AJ has swapped the jumpsuit for the traditional Nigerian dress worn by her mother. She used to be embarrassed by her mother’s clothes, she admits – “no other parents dressed like my mum and I was like, ‘Mum, just put on jeans and T-shirts like Kayleigh’s mum’” – but now there is a touching respect. And she wants to know if her mother ever knelt before her father. “No way, thank you very much,” says the spirited Florence.
Man number two is KC, 34, who loves God and Scrabble. And is a virgin. AJ is flummoxed by this revelation. “Having dated guys who couldn’t keep it in their trousers, KC’s values are oddly desirable,” she reflects. Back in the car, it’s the connection between AJ and her mother that is the more interesting. Women were expected to be virgins when Florence was young. Was AJ’s father a virgin? “I don’t think so,” says Florence, beaming.
In Benin City, AJ is supposed to learn how to be a traditional Nigerian housewife, so she is staying with a couple, Winnie and Cyril. “I’m starting to suspect one of the reasons [my mum has] brought me here is to see how I’d have coped if I’d been brought up in Nigeria,” says AJ. Isaac, a handsome musician, turns up – he’s Cyril’s younger brother and, I suspect, definitely not a virgin. “I treat the ladies nicely and I give them TLC. I call TLC ‘tender love and care’,” he says, not one to follow the crowd. I like Isaac – he seems open and emotionally literate – but he’s also rooted in the patriarchy. “If I go out to work every single day, irrespective of that I am still less than the man in the household?” checks AJ. “Sure,” says Isaac. AJ starts to wonder if this is “what nature intended” and whether it is necessarily a bad thing. Thankfully, Florence reappears to save her from herself.
The final suitor is Timini, a 30-year-old film star. He is confident, good-looking and forward-thinking – and he takes AJ on a date to the beach in a speedboat. “I love the beach,” says AJ. “You ever heard of Blackpool?” They bond over an Instagram bikini session and vow to keep in touch.
This was never going to be a show about a genuine search for a husband, but about the infinitely more interesting second-generation search for identity. AJ’s conclusion is that, in relationships, there is a compromise to be had between “the western way of thinking and the Nigerian way of thinking”. But she doesn’t expand on what it is Nigeria has to offer. “I don’t want to have to kneel down to my husband, I don’t want to be submissive,” she says instead. There was more to say, charming though this programme was. They should go back for more – though mostly because I’d love to see Florence again.
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