Review – The Farmer Wants A Wife
The Farmer Wants A Wife – Channel 9 – 8:30pm Monday – AUS
People are always going on about how much they hate reality television. Everything that’s wrong with TV these days inevitably gets blamed on reality TV. People are so quick to point the finger at all those darn dirty reality TV shows.
There are a couple of different breeds of reality television though. Nobody really has time for offensive reality television, whether it offends your intelligence like Australia’s Perfect Couple does, or whether it’s offensive in the way only a full body plastic surgery make over on The Swan could be.
While I have no problems talking at lengths about my love of comedies, or dramas, or comedy dramas, talking about the “reality shows” that I enjoy always makes me feel kind of dirty.
I’m not saying I’m in love with The Farmer Wants A Wife, over the past three seasons of the show I’ve only seen bits and pieces here and there. I’m just trying to say that all reality TV isn’t inherently evil and out to destroy our beloved television.
Farmer Wants A Wife presents us with 7 true blue Aussie farmers seeking 7 Aussie brides. The blokes have 70 desperate sheilas to choose from. We meet Russel, 27 – Nate, 37 – Scott, 28 – Phil, 42 – Brad, 29 – Steve, 27 and his dad Gavin, 49.
For my mind there are far too many farmers. No farmers get eliminated during the run, only ladies, so every episode will be hard pressed to cram every farmer’s story into the show. With this number of farmers the show tends to just repeat itself a lot. The last fifteen minutes were spent with not just one guy eliminating five girls, but with seven guys eliminating thirty five girls. Add that kind of repetition to an already drawn out elimination process and the last part of the show leaves you crying out for it to end over the course of three ad breaks.
The show would work better with only four farmers, or three farmers, or just Gavin & his dad, but the producers have to hedge their bets by guaranteeing that they get at least some good drama because they’ve got a small town’s sized cast to get it from.
Farmer Wants A Wife isn’t the televised B&S Ball you think it might be, it’s also surprisingly not as tacky as it should be. The show is part of that ‘inoffensive’ reality TV that I was talking about earlier. Feel good, non nasty reality TV. It’s a likeable enough program that you can switch your brain off to watch as the soundtrack works overtime to let you know how you should be feeling.
Farmer Brad, and Farmer Phil seem like good blokes who could be fun to follow. Farmer Dad Gavin is a bit of a weirdo though, and watching a creepy old man romance creepy old women is obviously quite creepy. You kind of feel sorry for the blokes having that many done up over enthusiastic women screaming at you when you enter a room.
People often go on about how reality television isn’t “real”. They seem to forget that it’s television. Of course it’s not real. Have you seen the news lately? Yeah, Livinia Nixon isn’t really hovering over the earth predicting tomorrow’s weather. That’s faked for our enjoyment.
Why do people always want real life anyway? As if they’d prefer to watch unedited footage of people sitting in an airport for hours waiting for their plane to arrive rather than having the editors on The Amazing Race make the whole thing more watchable.
Farmer Wants A Wife may not be “real” in that sense, but it’s most certainly “reality television.” Nice, clean fun that brings out the goofy loser in all of us.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright
