Married At First Sight Australia is as realistic as a Bollywood fight scene. But it’s compelling viewing
A friend of mine recently told me that he thought Married At First Sight Australia was incredible television. He has a flair for overstatement, so when I asked him to qualify that, he conceded that it wasn’t as good as The Sopranos, but still: amazing.
I could fill this column with what I think of comparing MAFSA (the acronym of choice among fans) to The Sopranos, but the conviction with which he recommended the show made me decide to give it a whirl. The premise, like the
British and US versions, is very much as it says on the tin: couples meet each other for the first time on their wedding day. They have been paired up by experts, who are definitely not a front for a set of producers putting people together for shits and giggles. After the wedding, they begin an experiment to see how that marriage pans out over the next two months. In the
Australian version, all the couples meet for dinner once a week with the experts watching proceedings from another room; they also go to a “commitment ceremony” every week, where each person can vote to stay or leave. But a couple can only leave if they both vote to do so.