Few reality shows are as repulsively addictive as Love Is Blind. The Netflix reality series arrived in 2020 with an unashamedly regressive premise: would desperate American singles get married after dating in isolated pods, unable to see one another and strictly forbidden from indicating how they looked to other participants?
The buzz that surrounded Love Is Blind when it was first aired is hard to overstate – it dominated pop culture coverage and social media for weeks. The slick production and high stakes of a real on-screen wedding (the marriages are legally binding, taking the dating show to a new extreme) made traditional reality TV cinematic – with an admixture of betrayal, fights and alcohol misuse. The total desperation of contestants was painted over with big-budget gloss. It made compulsive viewing because it quietly touched on a private desire for many millennials: the promise of immediate security after a lifetime of instability. It justified itself by offering millennial wish fulfilment for both contestants and viewers at home.
The show churned out new seasons every few months to rabid audiences. Its popularity and success as a matchmaking show meant it largely skirted criticism of exploiting contestants: several couples who met on the show remain happily married. But over the past year, Love Is Blind has lost its sheen. The last season, while still popular, failed to capture the zeitgeist in the same way those earlier seasons did. The highly anticipated release of the UK version – announced in February 2023 and hosted by Emma and Matt Willis – has met a surprisingly tepid response.
While many reality TV formats grow tired over many seasons, even if they are parachuted into a new environment or country (Love Is Blind UK marks the eighth iteration of the show in four years, with other versions airing in places like Japan, Mexico and Sweden), something else is at play here. The once-perversely beloved, A-list marriage show is in decline, with audiences less engaged by programmes that promise quick, manufactured partnerships. Indian Matchmaking – another pandemic hit from Netflix – seems to have been quietly axed in the past year, while The Ultimatum (also from Netflix) has struggled to trade on its nonsensical premise of asking established couples to swap partners. The Married at First Sight franchise – in both the UK and Australia – has failed to generate the same obsessive hype as in 2020 and 2021.
Why is this happening now? Part of it is circumstantial. These shows reached their peak in the pandemic, during a broader reality-TV renaissance. Their stimulating, unique concepts helped to puncture the monotony of successive lockdowns. But in 2024, their premises feel flimsy and boring. Their dynamics have grown predictable, and the shows themselves have become ubiquitous. The idea of marrying someone you barely know on television has become a reality trope. That means it’s that much harder to successfully bid for our attention.
Our social context has changed too. Marriage shows air to generations that are increasingly disillusioned with marriage. Non-monogamy is on the rise, even among those who have found the person they might deem their life partner. This trend has only grown more pronounced in a post-pandemic environment.
Love Is Blind increasingly seems representative of a grim, pessimistic view of love and self-worth. Looming over all these shows is the idea that marriage is a transcendent solution to all life’s problems. As Sophie McBain wrote in 2020 about the boom in these marriage shows: “What it really seems to demonstrate is how hungry people are for a feeling of personal connection and intimacy; how little it seems to take for the contestants to finally feel like someone understands them.” Witnessed over and over again, it becomes impossible to ignore the vulnerabilities that are capitalised on for our entertainment, and simultaneously it’s hard to remember what’s entertaining about the show at all.
This is only exacerbated by reports about how Love Is Blind is made. In the past two years, it has been at the centre of a set of ongoing legal battles between Netflix and the show’s production company, and ex-participants and crewmembers. There have been allegations that contestants were deprived of food and sleep and were encouraged to drink alcohol during filming. One former participant even claimed they had been placed in an abusive environment. Netflix has denied the accusations and the production company said that psychological care was available.
Perhaps as a result of this, producers are now beginning to get more creative with what romantic reality TV could look like. Shows like I Kissed a Girl and I Kissed a Boy on the BBC (both are queer versions of Love Island) and the Golden Bachelor and the Golden Bachelorette on the US channel ABC (retirement-aged versions of these shows) have been major successes, managing to deliver something new for audiences while still providing the dramatic moments that are fundamental to this genre. A fresher but gentler approach could be what viewers are seeking as respite after half a decade of reality-TV marriages.
Marriage reality shows do ultimately offer an accurate reflection of our present, dire heterosexual romantic landscape – one in which the promise of escape, through manufactured love, for many, remains appealing. But for all the excitement and frenzy they once generated, viewers are now left with a tired, limp concept that is desperately hoping we might find a reason to keep watching.
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