Midway through the last season of Married at First Sight Australia, Bryce Ruthven’s fate as one of reality TV’s most loathed “villains” was sealed. Tasked by producers with ranking every female participant in order of attractiveness, he placed his bride, Melissa Rawson, in fourth position while sitting next to her. “I know you were probably hoping you’re number one … but you know that I can’t lie,” he told the visibly upset Melissa. “I think if I put you at number one, you’d be able to tell that [I’m lying].”
The program, which returned for its ninth season in Australia on Monday night, matches complete strangers who meet for the first time at the altar. This scene was a particularly low moment in the series for Bryce, who had already been accused by viewers of appearing to gaslight and manipulate Melissa. But moments like this are part of what has helped make MAFS, as it has become known, a spectacularly successful reality phenomenon.
Abroad, everyone from Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell to musician Sam Smith have sung praises for the Australian version of the show; in Australia, the most recent season finale drew 1.398 million viewers – even more than Meghan and Harry’s explosive Oprah Winfrey interview.
One of them was writer Clementine Ford, who has mixed feelings about the show’s return. “How can you love something that you hate so much? Yes, I’m a huge MAFS fan,” she tells Guardian Australia. Or, rather: “I wouldn’t say that I’m a fan of MAFS the show. But I am a fan of the extreme emotions that MAFS makes me feel week after week.”
The “marriages” that begin the season aren’t legally binding, but over the weeks that follow we watch the relationships develop into something real, or, more often, spectacularly crash and burn. To help stoke the embers of marital discord, couples are subjected to tests – like being asked to rank their partner’s appearance.
Ford has regularly spoken out on social media about the often-toxic relationship dynamics that feature on MAFS – but it’s too complex, she says, for a simple condemnation. Referring to how Bryce appeared to treat Melissa in the series, Ford says: “I think is a really, really damaging thing for people to see play out on screen. On the other hand, it’s kind of helpful to be able to talk about those patterns.”
Tara McWilliams, the executive producer of Australia’s Married at First Sight, knows that what viewers saw of Bryce and Melissa’s relationship in the series “wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea”.
“We’re not there trying to encourage that kind of behaviour in a relationship, we’re there to document it,” McWilliams says. “But what I like about MAFS is that it starts the conversation with people about your own experiences, about what you think is wrong or right, and acceptable or not. I think the Bryce and Melissa relationship certainly did that.”
“But I want to be really clear – if we think that somebody is unsafe, or in harm’s way, or at risk of being in harm’s way, we would intervene. We wouldn’t allow that to happen for the sake of a good storyline,” she adds.
Bryce and Melissa – along with other couples from previous seasons – have disputed how their relationship came across in the show, attributing it to editing. “They have to have a villain and for some reason I got picked out,” Ruthven said recently.
McWilliams believes that the “unpredictability” of the relationships on the show is what keeps people tuning in. “We’ve often compared it to a telenovela, in that it’s very addictive viewing,” she says.
Last year, MAFS got a new audience hooked: the show became a surprise lockdown hit in the UK, pulling in 1.57 million viewers an episode at its peak. While the UK has its own MAFs, it’s Australia’s version that Britons have fallen for – perhaps thanks to the extra havoc, scandal and sex it packs in. There have been affairs, physical altercations, wine tipped over heads; last season, in an act of revenge, one husband used his wife’s toothbrush to clean faeces off their toilet.
“It’s a bit of a mystery, in some ways, as to why people are so open and honest on such a public platform, but we’re very grateful they are,” McWilliams says.
But MAFS hasn’t always been quite this messy. In its first four seasons, the show’s format was different: it featured fewer couples, the cast lived separately, and the weekly dinner party and commitment ceremony episodes, which regularly create explosive conflict, did not exist. But when McWilliams took over in season five, Channel Nine gave MAFS four episodes a week, and the show became a hit.
That seasonwas the point, Ford says, was when MAFS changed from being a show that “genuinely explored the psychological growth and love between two people” into “the absolute unrepentant garbage fire that we know and love-hate it as today”.
“They had some really toxic personalities on it [in season five]. That sucked me in – so well done, Tara, one of the most diabolically genius producers ever to have existed,” she laughs.
The show has only become more salacious since season five, which Ford believes is due in part to its notoriety. As it has become more popular, more participants have signed up for what some people call “the wrong reasons” – reality TV parlance for those looking to get famous, rather than finding a soulmate.
And the “science” the show’s producers claim determine their couples hasn’t often worked. Of the 71 couples the show has matched, only five remain together today. Bryce and Melissa are actually one of the few success stories: the pair are now engaged and recently welcomed twin boys.
McWilliams insists that, despite perceptions, producers try to cast those genuinely looking for love: “We understand that’s not the only motivation [for going on MAFS] … but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who is single that doesn’t actually want to meet someone great.”
But while meeting someone is one thing, Ford believes that insisting the contestants “try and make it work at all costs” could be a damaging message for viewers – particularly women. “Reality television should be seen as a diversion, not as a guide,” she says. “Generally speaking, any kind of narrative that enforces this idea that partnership leads to happiness and singledom leads to despair is really toxic and fucked up. And the idea that women are better off being with anyone, no matter how unfulfilling it is … that’s really messed up. I think that women should be taking away the message that oftentimes it’s better to be single.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean she won’t tune in. “Every year, I’m like, I’m not gonna watch it. This is trash,” Ford says. “And every year I watch it.”
The ninth season of Married at First Sight is airing now on Channel Nine in Australia. International broadcasts have yet to be announced
This article was amended on 2 February 2022, to correct McWilliams’ surname.
