Married At First Site UK review: car crash telly that’s as shallow as a puddle

Let’s not kid ourselves - MAFS is awful. Truly awful.

It’s car crash telly which is based on the two staples of every ‘reality’ TV show - conflict and resolution. Minus those ingredients, it’s just a bunch of nondescript folk you don’t know doing something almost vaguely interesting, and that doesn’t hook viewers. Or advertisers.

So, crank up the dramatic soundtrack, and make sure there is always the hint of a showdown or melodrama to come – but, bottom line, it’s as shallow as a puddle and filled with the sort of people whose screeching is migraine inducing. If you stumbled across them in a bar, you’d go next door for a pint in peace.

Some things in life are hard to ignore, but worth the effort. MAFS is one of ‘em.

But, still we return nightly for the latest instalment of human misery, and kiddie-on greeting where rarely do any tears roll down those perfectly sculptured coupons. Much of it is actually so instantly forgettable the show needs to constantly flash up the names of the participants. They might as well wear them on a piece of string round their necks.

The Ellies, Ambers, Sachas and Nikkis all morph into one identikit person, while the blokes seem to have been assembled from spare parts in a toy making factory - how else do you explain the awful haircuts and teeth?

Only Caspar stands out, and for all the wrong reasons – the experts paired him with a replica of the sister he seems locked in lifelong competition with - while the bloke who went ‘wow’ when he turned round at the aisle will never live down the fact it was the sister of his bride who he then deemed ‘nice.’

But it’s all calculated to make great telly. The goal of a happy ever after only comes if you play the silly parlour games such as opening the honesty box at those ghastly dinner parties, meeting the in-laws, and retaining what is left of your dignity in intimacy week.

And even if you navigate the faux drama, how you are presented is completely out of your hands. The editing process creates the characters the producers want us to see - the villains, the bitchy ones, the engaging ones and the couples who seem to lurch from mutual loathing to blissful happiness and back again in less than a week of episodes. The cynic in me wonders how many times those heart to hearts are actually filmed - or do we really believe folk with zero telly experience are word perfect the minute the cameras roll?

Reality telly is many things. Real it isn’t. If you sign up on that basis then you might just get a few Instagram followers out of it, and a brief - very brief - dance in the social media spotlight, and I guess if your own validation rests on how many like your posts get, this is the show for you.

MAFS as a programme about couples is light years away from the old days when Mr & Mrs was a massive tea-time hit on ITV as Derek Batey asked each partner who was the worst at drying the dishes or putting out the bins.

His catchphrase was ”be nice to each other.” Ironically, in the #bekind era of 2024, that feels wholly redundant.