Add Category
Posted
Australian TV viewers are having a love affair with love affairs.
Once considered the poor cousin of the reality TV family, relationships are now the shining star of a host of shows that have gripped Australians' attention.
There's plenty that's unreal about these shows — the nightly cocktail parties, dramatic dates involving helicopters and relationship boot camps on private islands. But wipe away the extravagance and grandeur and the what's left is something highly relatable and universal: love, friendship and companionship.
Relationships are an ideal story arc for reality TV. Most relationships are full of ups and downs and the consequences can be life-changing. Each end of the tale is dramatic — new romance is full of thrills and surprises, while the end of a relationship can be consumed by bitterness, anger and jealousy — all ingredients that make up television dramas.
A banquet of romance
There's no shortage of choice when it comes to what sort of relationship drama viewers want to consume: Channel 10 have The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, in which two dozen singles compete for the love and attention of just one person; Channel Seven has Seven Year Switch, a "social experiment" where troubled couples swap partners to "test" their relationship and discover if it's worth saving, and the self-explanatory First Date, where the most controversial aspect is the illusion that people are actually paying for their meal.
Over on Channel Nine, viewers have been subjected to Married at First Sight, Last Resort and the veteran of the lot, Farmer Wants a Wife.
From the couch, we empathise with the quest for a loving relationship, with a couple that's having a hard time and with couples trying to save their relationships. We can offer up our amateur psychology and enjoy the drama without any consequences.
Watching two people make out on TV or discuss their problems is an acceptable form of being a "peeping Tom".
We can enjoy getting swept up in an epic romance, from watching two people making out or airing their dirty laundry, and then can gossip about on social media.
These shows also reflect what's going on in real-life dating culture, which is fast, furious and often confusing. We live in an era of "instant relationships", thanks to apps like Tinder and Bumble, where we can make quick, intense connections, and get dumped or "ghosted" just as fast. It's not unlike our personal version of the drama on The Bachelor.
In a practical sense, we get an idea of what "the other side" is thinking — we recognise our own experiences when onscreen trysts go wrong. We can all be experts and say how we would have played it differently.
From food to renovations to love
Reality television moves in cycles. For a long time, audiences — and producers — couldn't get enough of competitions, with shows such as Australian Idol and Survivor dominating. Then the trend moved from unfulfilled ambitions closer to home — renovations and cooking.
In some ways, renovations and relationships are similar — it's either fixing something broken or creating something new from scratch.
The heart of our "journey" — reality television's favourite word — to reality TV romance addiction is old-fashioned curiosity about how other people live and how they find love.
Not everyone can sing, not everyone can cook and not everyone can even afford to buy a house to later renovate. But almost all of us will have romantic relationships and it's this universal theme, often shown on television in a much more exaggerated form, that we can both relate and aspire to.
There's no hiding the fact that viewers and contestants alike are manipulating each other. Onscreen lovers get a taste of instant fame — and maybe even a real relationship — and viewers get to enjoy some voyeurism, indulging in something that is normally frowned upon.
It's a bit wrong but it's also a lot of fun. And television producers know it.
Alana Schetzer is a freelance writer.
Topics: television, arts-and-entertainment, relationships, australia