Dated & Related seemingly begins like your classic reality dating show. Attractive singles from around the world are ready to mingle at a luxurious French villa as they sip from colorful water bottles and lounge next to a crystal-clear pool. But, of course, there's a big catch: Each contestants is joined by their sibling, who's also looking for love.

The newest experiment in reality dating promises to be the most “awkward dating show in history” and it certainly delivers: In the trailer alone, Deyon kisses someone in front of sister Dyman, while Corrina flirts hard with Kaz — right next to her brother Joey.

So why in the world would anyone submit themselves to this? According to host Melinda Berry, it's because “finding love isn't easy” — but also because, as showrunner Ed Sleeman tells Tudum, “the person who knows you best may be the best person to help you find love.”

Dated and Related Season 1 Trailer

When Sleeman was pitched the idea of siblings on a dating show, he knew it would be “fascinating TV.” It’s hard to get away with putting on a facade when the person who arguably knows you best and keeps you honest is around. Sleeman says brothers and sisters are like “built-in BS detectors,” therefore ideally opening their siblings up to genuine, authentic love.

“If everybody's being completely honest about who they are, then they can make meaningful connections with other people and potentially fall in love because you're not creating a version of yourself,”Sleeman says. “It is you. It has to be you, because your sibling will make sure that you're not lying to anybody.”

Ana Blumenkron/Netflix

From that premise, Sleeman and his team leaned into the sibling dynamics as much as possible  — siblings are bunked up with each other like they would be on childhood vacations, and sibling pairs are sent on double dates with other sibling pairs.

But that also means leaning into the natural awkwardness that springs from seeing your brother or sister date, or even begin to get intimate with someone. The Episode 1 double date between Joey and Corrina and twins Kaz and Kieran, Sleeman says, “played out exactly as we hoped” — meaning extraordinarily cringe-inducing.

Corrina, however, doesn’t find the date as awkward as it may have appeared on-screen. "It was really strange, but I think after a couple minutes of getting used to the dynamic, it got better," she tells Tudum. "Joey was a great wingman and it actually ended up being really, really fun."

Despite this, Corrina says back in the real world, she and Joey won't be going on any double dates any time soon, and Sleeman himself admits that the prospect of finding love alongside his own sisters is “absolutely terrifying.”

Dr. Karen Gail Lewis, a sibling therapist from Maryland, agrees with this sentiment, saying dating is a practice best done without an annoying little brother or sister in the mix. But she notes that siblings have a complex effect on your love life, pointing to patterns she's noticed over the years treating brothers and sisters.

“The research shows that, if you like your sibling, you will choose someone just like that person,” Dr. Lewis tells Tudum. “But if you don't like your sibling, you will choose someone exactly the opposite.”

Dr. Lewis gives the example of women liking so-called “bad boys” — if one sibling has a troubled relationship with her golden-boy brother, the other may go for a troublesome partner in the future. And with Dated & Related, where all of the siblings (hopefully) like each other, Lewis says siblings are likely to go for people who are similar to their brother or sister.

Ana Blumenkron/Netflix

And yes, there are siblings who can get too close — Lewis says she's treated sets of siblings who lived together and double-dated together; but when one of them got married, the other got jealous. (The solution, she says, is to get into relationships at the same time.)

In the case of Dated & Related, however, Sleeman says it’s important to have the siblings be as close as possible: one, so they can explore the built-in dynamics of people who've known each other for their entire lives and two, so contestants will already have a shoulder to cry on when things (inevitably) go wrong. Producers ended up leaning into this dynamic, scrapping silly challenges and replacing them with heartfelt ones, like Episode 9's letter assignment.

“The contestants all said when they came out, “I couldn't have done it without my brother or sister,’” Sleeman says. “So many times throughout it, they were going to each other for support.”

The same is true for Corrina, who says she and her brother Joey went in as each other's “best friend,” and somehow grew even closer.

“Including my brother in the conversations of my love life has become more comfortable and I think it's a really great thing because he's my brother — he wants what's best for me,” she says. “He knows me sometimes better than I know myself, so he can help me navigate the tricky world of dating.”