‘Design’ a Decorating Dating Game

The relentlessly ambitious folks at Home and Garden Television have managed to churn out a half-dozen new shows for the fall season, but if tonight’s premiere of “Love by Design” is any indication, that thud you hear is the channel hitting the creative wall.

The new program, airing at 7:30, is an amiable but awkward attempt to graft a “Blind Date” format onto an interior design makeover show like TLC’s “Trading Spaces.” The attempt is such a contrived struggle that even the preview tape had beads of sweat on it.

The “Love by Design” concept is this: Using hip-hoppish music, zippy graphics and jittery hand-held camerawork, actor and co-host Richard Yearwood interviews three bachelors, who give us brief tours of their individual apartments. Then the other host, architect Dee Dee Taylor Hannah, takes a young lady through each of the pads while the guys are away. The woman is supposed to pick the guy she thinks has the most romantic potential based solely on his apartment, and then she must decide how she’ll re-do the place for him. After the make-over, the bachelor returns, meets the woman, sees what she’s done with the place, and the new couple are left alone to ponder their future.

Tonight’s young woman, an actuary named Takami who loves sports and musicals, seems an eager participant. Yet after she picks the apartment, it’s Taylor Hannah who takes over and makes all the new design choices. The bachelor returns and tells Takami how impressed he is with her decorating abilities, but neither she nor Taylor Hannah have the heart to tell him the truth.

Still, perhaps there’s something to the concept. As the cheery hosts left the apartment, Takami and her new man huddled on a day bed, oblivious to the world as their fingers moved over a backgammon board.