In a move that has shocked precisely no one outside the production office, British media watchdogs have finally roused themselves from their customary slumber to declare Married at First Sight Australia 'disturbing'. Yes, the show where two strangers are hitched by a panel of alleged experts and then filmed bickering over burnt toast while the producers fan the flames with a bellows of pure malice has been deemed unhealthy. Groundbreaking. Next they'll tell us the sun is hot and that politicians lie.
Let us cast our minds back to the halcyon days when this franchise first slithered onto our screens. It was a simpler time. We thought it was a noble experiment in love. We were wrong. It is a social experiment in the way that gladiatorial combat was a sport. The participants are not couples; they are crash test dummies for the algorithm of misery. They are plucked from obscurity, dressed in finery, and then thrown into a pressure cooker of jealousy, resentment, and lousy claret. The 'experts' sit there with the solemnity of war criminals, nodding as they orchestrate disaster.
But now, Ofcom has woken up. They've received, I'm told, 'a deluge of complaints' from viewers who have suddenly noticed that watching two people tear each other apart for entertainment might be a teensy bit problematic. Where were these complainants during the infamous 'spit roast' incident? Or when the show cynically paired a man who clearly wasn't ready for a relationship with a woman who wanted nothing more? Asleep at the wheel, presumably, dreaming of Poldark.
The watchdog's report, leaked to me by a source who reeks of cordite and righteous fury, calls the show 'disturbing' and 'emotionally abusive'. It demands accountability. Accountability from whom? The producers, who are probably already planning a spin-off where couples are forced to survive on a desert island with only one machete and a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey? Or the participants, who signed up for this in the full knowledge that their mental health would be fed through a woodchipper for our amusement?
Let us not pretend this is about ethics. This is about ratings. The show is a ratings juggernaut. It dominates the streaming charts. And why? Because we, the great unwashed, love a car crash. We love watching someone's carefully constructed facade crumble when they discover their spouse has a 'bromance' with a brick wall. We love the tears, the screaming, the retreat to the 'apartment' where they air grievances like they're competing for a gold medal in passive aggression.
But now the watchdogs have barked. They want change. They want the show to stop being 'disturbing'. But how? By giving the couples actual therapy? By not stacking the deck with dodgy casting choices designed to maximise conflict? By turning it into a polite gardening programme? Let's be honest: the show's entire premise is controversy. Without the shouting, the accusations, the sudden revelation that someone has a secret meth lab, it's just Tinder with worse lighting.
So what happens next? The producers will release a statement expressing 'deep concern' for participant welfare. They will promise to implement 'safeguards'. They will then ignore these safeguards and film a ten-part special where couples are locked in a basement and forced to communicate only through interpretive dance. And we will watch. We always watch. Because we are the real problem. We are the ones who demand these orgies of emotion. We are the ones who share the memes of a contestant's face as she realises her husband is a sociopath. We are the audience, and we are insatiable.
Therefore, let us not be distracted by the finger-wagging of watchdogs. Let us instead look inward. Ask yourself: why do you watch? Is it for the love? Or is it for the schadenfreude? And if it's the latter, maybe it's time to turn off the telly and go outside. But then you'd miss the next episode, where a man is forced to choose between his wife and his collection of vintage thimbles. And we all know which side that trainwreck is heading.
So yes, the show is disturbing. It has always been disturbing. It is a circus of human misery, and we are the ringmasters. But don't ask the watchdogs to fix it. Ask yourself: what does it say about us that we need this? Until then, I'll be at the pub, drinking gin, contemplating the emptiness of our collective soul.
