Married at First Sight, Channel 9, Monday 8.45pm, Tuesday 9.40pm
SERIOUS music, serious voice overs – relationship “experts”, the words “social experiment” this is a serious documentary right?
Mmmm maybe.
Or is it a reality program taken to the enth degree?
Most probably.
The first Married at First Sight was a Danish observational documentary series which put relationships under the microscope.
The most talked about format to come out of MIPCOM 2013 Married at First Sight works with leading relationship experts to carefully match-make eight Australian singles into four married couples, who each meet each other for the very first time at their wedding.
The cameras then follow the couples through meeting with the “experts”, telling their friends and families (though I rolled my eyes when they had the farmer tell his cows – telling his mum and Nan was obviously scarier. Nan was on-board straight away because they wanted their boy married, obviously).
Ronni and Michael seem to be a match made in heaven – the other pair, not so much.
In fact they are where this feels more like a bad reality program than a “social experiment”.
The experts keep popping up to explain what they are feeling and the music gets more and more dramatic.
We follow the couple as they marry, honeymoon, meet the in-laws and set up home, all the while getting to know one another more and more deeply, to see if the matchmakers have got it right and they will have a future together.
Of course this is not a marriage in a legal sense – that happens at the end of the experiment – if it works.
I hate reality programs but this one is sucking me in – will the couples work? Will they stay together.
Oh god it’s car crash TV and I can’t look away – who will stick together?
The people seem real – not people looking to be television stars – and that makes what they are going through more real.
This has already a massive hit in Denmark the format has been sold to Germany, Holland, the United States, France, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Belgium.
It rated it’s head off the first week – will we keep watching to the end.
I hate reality programs – this shouldn’t feel real. The music is stupidly dramatic and the voice overs totally over the top serious voice over but I’m still watching.
It reminds me more of a British show called the Village that I watched on Pay TV a year ago – fly on the wall more than reality.
And by the end – I think Lachy and Clare have a better chance of making it than Ronni and Michael.
I watched hoping to hate it. I made it through to the end and I feel a bit dirty. I entered into this union of viewer and program involuntarily – will I see it through to the end, mmmm jury is still out.
– TANIA PHILLIPS
